How to follow up with tasks assigned to others ?

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Do you need to assign a task to someone, but you are not sure they’ll do the work in time?

I’m not an expert on psychology so I’m not going to talk about trust issues :sweat_smile: Joke aside, if you can trust and wait for the work to be done, that’s ideal. Otherwise keep reading!

I can show you how you can help your team meet your deadlines and achieve success in your projects:

1. Keep it assigned to yourself, comment “can you help X?” and change the due date to the next day waiting for an answer, to be sure they can pick it up.

Instead of just assigning the task, you might want to keep it to yourself and add a collaborator.

Once you get confirmation, you can change the assignee and remain as a collaborator yourself; once the task is done, you will get a notification in your inbox that it was completed.

2. Assign the task and create a follow up task.

Another move would be to assign the task and create follow-up task from this one.

You can forget about everything and check back when you set a due date.

3. Use the search “tasks assigned to others” and review daily

If you have a large team, need to follow-up with several people and don’t want your inbox full of notifications, then this is the solution.

Just use the advanced search bar and check daily the task assigned to others.

You can select just one assignee or all at the same time. And make sure to save your search if needed. It will show on the left sidebar as a saved search.

That’s how you can follow-up with tasks assigned to others, pick the one you like the most!

Bastien, Asana Expert
iDO (Asana Partner: Services & Licenses)

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Good tips, thanks @Bastien_Siebman

Personally, like to work as a kind of project manager with tasks and subtasks.

My main task is my personal accountability, and the subtask(s) are action(s) I’m asking my colleagues to perform.
I’m following those subtasks as collaborator to be aware, and the main task is my reminder to regularly check and encourage progress.
Sometimes I also add a dependency (between parent task and subtask) to remind me to achieve my main task when the subtask is completed.

Finally, that’s a similar as your follow-up tasks, but more structured (perfect for my typical ADHD brain :grin:)

:wave:

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I agree with these, Bastien! I also like to create follow-up tasks for myself to check in on progress and make sure things are on track.

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This is exactly what I do, me as the assignee at the parent task, and colleagues as the assign at sub-tasks. I generally always add the dependency so it’s very clear to task assignees that I cannot do my thing until they do their thing.

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Our firm created a custom filed called “Manager” and added all the Managers to this list. Each project is assigned a Manager. Then you can run a report by Manager and see all the projects that were assigned (including your own) and how long the project has been outstanding.

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Great suggestions! While not a fan of assigning tasks to myself (too much is already assigned to me when it shouldn’t be), I am definitely using

comment “can you help X?” and change the due date to the next day waiting for an answer, to be sure they can pick it up.

It is always a balance of keeping accountability, and ensuring that they have enough resources to complete the tasks.

This is also my favorite use of the phone: following up on tasks that are due or past due. While we are able to communicate so much through a project through digital means, sometimes I can get more detail from a 30 second call because they don’t know how to comment on the task what issue they are having.

Thank you for the insights.

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