I find I have quite a bad memory so when I ask a team member if they could do something and let me know when it's done I tend to forget about it and rely on that person to remember and hence let me know when it's done.
However I find myself constantly having to chase people up when I realized they haven't done it. It's not just on the odd occasion but I find it happens the majority of the time to the point where I don't feel like I can trust the members in our team to remember to do something that we talked about.
Not only that, I find it effects my time as I feel like I have to remember not only my tasks but others as well. I understand everyone is busy with their work and so don't expect people to jump when said jump p.s. I'm not a manager as we work in a agile environment and so try to facilitate a flat level hierarchy where we can!
What I would like to do is become better at helping facilitate better communication between team members and expressing the desire that when we discuss an issue and agree to doing something the person takes ownership of that request.
NOTE: This is not a manager asking a team member but team members working together to resolve a problem and attempting to remove road blocks.
Such examples of requests might include:
- Asking them to check in their code as I am waiting on a piece of functionality that I know they have completed. I just ask to be notified when this has happened so I don't have to constantly check.
- They tell me they are checking in their code right now but nothing happens for a while. When I quiz them after a period of time they say they are doing it just now and suddenly it's done.
- I ask if they could send me some information on their task as it's related to what I am doing and would help me in my work at the time.