I am a software developer with having 5 years of experience and currently working in a team of 5 people. There is only one member is senior to me, so she is the team lead. This means that communication with upper management and project planning is her responsibility. She was doing fine until now.
I don’t know what has happened, but she seems to not be taking interest in this work (I think she is assigned some other work as well). She has changed her sitting location to the conference room so that she cannot be easily approached. So even if I ask for any suggestion or any technical help her response is really cold, like “you continue whatever you are doing”, “I’ll get back to you in next week”, “you continue on your own”.
The problem is that now the department head who is supposed to follow her up for project plans and related documents is asking me for all these things. I am formally not given any of the responsibility of this, and she is not out of the project.
Due to this situation, I am not able to clearly identify my role, or my scope of work, in the team.
How would I deal with this situation?