Azure RACI Matrix Template: Free Download for Cloud Projects (2025)

TL;DR: A practical, CAF-aligned roles & responsibilities matrix you can drop straight into your runbooks. Download it as PDF or Excel and adapt to your org.

This guide is part of our Azure Governance hub covering policy enforcement, compliance frameworks, and enterprise controls.

It fills a real gap: Microsoft's Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) defines functions (Strategy, Plan, Ready, Adopt, Govern, Manage) but doesn't give you a practical RACI or matrix.
This post bridges that gap with a ready-to-use tool.

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Downloads

Jump to a section

• CAF Mapping Overview
• How this maps to Microsoft's CAF

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CAF Mapping Overview

CAF Function	Typical Responsibilities	Example Roles
Strategy	Define business outcomes, funding, adoption plan	CIO, Enterprise Architect
Plan	Rationalize apps, migration waves, skills readiness	Program Manager, Project Manager
Ready	Landing zone, identity, networking, governance setup	Azure Admin, Platform Engineer
Adopt	Migration execution, DevOps pipelines, workload onboarding	DevOps Engineer, App Owners
Govern	Policy, compliance, security guardrails, cost mgmt	Security Engineer, Compliance Officer
Manage	Operations, monitoring, patching, incident response	Help Desk, Ops Engineer, Service Owner

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How this maps to Microsoft's CAF

CAF defines six functions across the adoption lifecycle — Strategy, Plan, Ready, Adopt, Govern, Manage — but stops short of a practical RACI.
This matrix fills that gap by mapping common IT roles to CAF responsibilities so you can assign ownership decisively.

• Learn more: Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework

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⚠️ The "30,000 Resource" Reality Check

Reading this definition of roles is easy. But here is the hard truth I learned managing 44 subscriptions: Governance doesn't fail because people don't know the definitions.

It fails because you can't manually map 30,000 resources to 50+ roles in a wiki page.

Most Azure Architects spend weeks building a "perfect" policy document that gets ignored the day it's published. We don't have time for theory. We need enforcement.

I built this Azure Noob Governance Suite to solve the implementation gap. It’s not just a list of roles—it’s the operational "glue" that connects your policy definitions to your actual engineering teams, designed specifically to survive an audit.

Manual vs Template

Feature	❌ Doing It Manually	✅ Azure Noob Template
Setup Time	3-4 Weeks of "Alignment Meetings"	15 Minutes (Pre-filled)
Logic	Static text (Must update manually)	Automated (Flags Gap/Overlap)
CAF Alignment	Guesswork & Interpretation	100% Microsoft Aligned
Audit Readiness	"I'll have to get back to you"	One-Click Evidence Export
Result	A document nobody reads	A system that enforces itself

🚀 What's Included (The Hidden Bonuses)

• The "Gap Hunter" Logic: My custom Excel formula that instantly turns a row RED if a task has zero owners (Risk) or two owners (Conflict).
• The AI Governance Add-On: A dedicated section defining specific roles for Azure OpenAI (Token Management, Responsible AI, Data Privacy) so you don't get blocked by legal.
• The "Tagging Enforcer": The exact policy definition mapping to ensure every Resource Group inherits the 'Owner' tag from this specific matrix.