I find myself assigning blame and I don't want to

Question

Back in June I completed a task and asked a project manager to notify the client it was completed in a public work chat. That project manager stated it is not their project but will talk to who they believe is the project manager since he was having a meeting at 3pm with him.

At this point I basically forgot about it and moved on; but nothing was ever done.

Fast forward to September, the client is asking me directly who was notified that the work was completed? I found myself with my pants down and I go on our work chatroom and ask about how to respond (as I don't communicate with clients normally) and I made a note in the chatroom (which the big boss can read) about how I asked the project manager to notify the client and that I am not sure what happened.

I feel like I am basically blaming others and that it wasn't my job to notify the client and that I handed it off to him and he told me he would see it through. How could I handle this better besides assigning blame? I obviously don't feel like I am at fault but I don't want to point fingers either.

Answer 1

From your comments you knew from 11am that the work was complete, yet the PM was unavailable until 3PM, and as such could have contacted the relevant people to alert them when they were available. That didn't happen. You did, however, contact another Project Manager.

There are two faults here - firstly, you didn't inform the actual project manager. Secondly the other project manager neglected to pass on your message.

However, in the grand scheme of ownership, it wasn't the second PMs responsibility to pass on the message - it was yours. To me the best course of action would be to hold your hands up, say it was me who contacted the wrong person and didn't chase it up and that it was an honest mistake.