- Working definition: DACI needs a published definition, population, evidence source, owner, operating consequence, effective date, and review condition.
- Business purpose: DACI makes one governance decision inspectable instead of allowing the current assignment or loudest stakeholder to become the rule.
- Mechanics: Publish the covered population, evidence standard, decision owner, approver, effective timing, exception path, and review cadence in advance.
- Operating context: Use DACI during planning, scenario review, activation, and material in-year changes while keeping current and proposed states separate.
- Practical test: Apply DACI to one disputed account and distinguish a data correction, a policy exception, and a proposed change to the standard.
- BoogieBoard doctrine: Publish the DACI standard before reviewing assignments so its tradeoffs remain visible and the approved sequence cannot be reverse-engineered from preferred outcomes.
What is DACI?
DACI is a decision-rights framework that assigns a Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed stakeholders to a territory planning decision, with the definition, owner, evidence, and review timing published before assignments are approved. It becomes operational when the population, source evidence, owner, and consequence are explicit enough for another reviewer to reproduce.
Define DACI from the operating decision it is meant to support. In the governance & change context, that decision should turn recurring ownership, credit, routing, exception, and approval decisions into visible operating rules. Its definition should exclude adjacent decisions that use different evidence, owners, or consequences.
A complete DACI definition names the covered population, evidence standard, decision owner, approver, effective timing, exception criteria, expiration or review condition, and the operating consequence of the decision.
Review Rules of Engagement, Account Definition, Account Hierarchy, Credit Allocation with DACI. Those concepts may supply inputs, constrain the decision, or consume its output, but none should silently inherit the same definition.
What DACI includes
Start with defined populations, decision rights, evidence requirements, approvers, effective dates, exception paths, and audit history. Record the field or policy owner, source date, transformation, comparison population, and correction path. If any required input is unavailable, mark the limitation rather than filling it with an undocumented proxy. That preserves the difference between observed evidence and planning judgment.
Every task in a well-managed process needs to have a Driver and an Approver (these terms come from the DACI method for project management). Leave no room for ambiguity about who owns tasks and who can make decisions.
Apply DACI to the complete affected population before reviewing individual preferred outcomes. Preserve the current state, classify each challenge as a correction, exception, or policy proposal, and record the approved future treatment with its effective date and decision history.
The decision record for DACI should retain the request, governed evidence, policy result, reviewer, approver, effective date, and any expiration or reconsideration condition. Report corrections, exceptions, and policy changes separately. Combining them in one exception count hides whether the underlying problem is data quality, inconsistent administration, or an outdated standard. Before approval, ask a reviewer outside the original design team to reproduce the DACI result or decision from that retained evidence.
A practical DACI example
Before a planning cycle, the team publishes the decision rights, evidence requirements, approver, timing, and exception path for DACI. A seller raises a specific account case. The request is logged against the published standard rather than resolved in a private message or by immediately changing the current owner.
The reviewer classifies the request as a data correction, policy exception, or proposed policy change. Corrections update governed evidence and rerun the rule. Exceptions preserve the original result, record the business reason and approver, and receive an effective or expiration date. Policy changes are evaluated across the full affected population.
The final decision is reflected in the approved scenario and activation package. Managers and sellers receive the same explanation, and later reviewers can reconstruct who decided what and why. This is the practical difference between DACI as published governance and DACI as an informal habit.
How DACI relates to territory planning
DACI may vary by segment, role, customer motion, geography, product, and planning stage when the business reason is published. Each population still needs an internally consistent standard and a clear explanation of why its treatment differs.
Test the rule against ordinary cases, edge cases, vacancies, and material in-year changes. Review both the summary outcome and underlying account roster. The standard should remain usable when the original planner is no longer present to explain it.
Review Data Dispute, Escalation Path, Project Hub, Global vs Local Ownership alongside DACI. Preserve their distinct definitions and show the dependency between them so a correction to evidence does not quietly become a policy exception or assignment preference.
DACI operating rules and pitfalls
The primary DACI failure is allowing private messages or manager preference to become an undocumented policy exception. Prevent it by publishing the definition and decision sequence before individual assignments are reviewed, then evaluate proposed changes across the full affected population.
Another failure is confusing a correction with an exception under DACI. A correction changes governed evidence; an exception accepts the evidence but authorizes different treatment for a documented reason, approver, and period.
Review DACI on the formal policy cadence and after material exceptions. Monitor unresolved requests, recurring exception reasons, expired approvals, and differences between the approved and live states; repeated exceptions may indicate that the published standard needs revision.
In practice with BoogieBoard
For DACI, the relevant BoogieBoard workflow preserves the decision, evidence, approver, effective state, and later audit trail. BoogieBoard records scenario decisions, comments, and territory changes so teams can understand who changed the model, when it changed, and what evidence supported the decision. Reviewers can compare the approved scenario with the current state, classify feedback as a correction or exception, and preserve the account-level result before activation. That history matters when a seller, manager, or operator later asks why an account moved or why a policy was applied differently in a documented case.
