Solve team miscommunication in Trello with Threaded Comments
Share on socials
Solve team miscommunication in Trello with Threaded Comments
Dan Ivory
30th November, 2021
5 min read
Dan Ivory
30th November, 2021
5 min read
Ready to declutter your Trello cards and boost team collaboration? Learn more about Threaded Comments for Trello.
“90% of all management problems are caused by miscommunication.” - Dale Carnegie
Not only does miscommunication cause management problems, but it can also result in lost productivity and, ultimately, lost profit. This is where our new Power-Up for Trello comes into its own.
Introducing Threaded Comments for Trello!
We’ve developed a Power-Up that can help your team reduce miscommunication and confusion when working in Trello. Threaded Comments for Trello encourages clarity and consistency when discussing multiple topics inside a card. Its core function is to easily thread replies to enable more accurate and open communication between team members working inside Trello.
Why Trello communication matters
The quote at the top of the blog is by Dale Carnegie - lecturer and author of many books on corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. He wrote one of the all-time best-selling self-help books, "How to Win Friends and Influence People”, so he knew a thing or two about communication.
Even in Dale Carnegie’s pre-internet days, miscommunication was a significant problem. Apply this to modern-day online chatting, devoid of the non-verbal cues we humans often rely on, and the potential for miscommunication becomes even higher.
Now, let’s apply this thinking to how Trello users typically discuss work tasks inside Trello comments. If you stick to one simple task per card, free-flowing conversation is easy enough:
This all changes when you try to discuss multiple items in the same card. This is a frequent occurrence inside Trello, especially if you utilise checklists or involve multiple team members.
Multiple checklist items in one card - all of which may need a discussion, as shown below…
An example of a long and jumbled conversation about multiple topics when using regular Trello comments.
Here we have multiple topics being discussed in a confusing jumble on top of each other, often by multiple people. Keeping track of what the latest message relates to is not at all easy. And don’t even try to read back through a conversation to catch up. Your team will quickly become a pack of confused Tacos (Trello’s huskie mascot)!
Thread Trello comments for context, clarity and collaboration
Reduce confusion and increase clarity
By simply adding threaded comments to your Trello boards you can easily provide structure to multiple conversations and allow each conversation to exist in its own, easy-to-read thread.
Let’s compare the same conversation with and without Threaded Comments for Trello
Regular Trello comments (left) compared to Threaded Comments for Trello (right).
We can see with Threaded Comments you can quickly find the conversation related to each Task and follow the discussion more easily. View the gif below to see this in action.
Boost collaboration
“ Employees spend an average of 1.8 hours a day searching and gathering for information.” - Mckinsey
Before Threaded Comments for Trello, teams had been discussing their work on other platforms, such as Slack, Zoom or email. There are a few downsides to this. Firstly, it encourages communication silos to develop. Conversations often happen in private away from the rest of the team, creating communication bottlenecks and reducing the chance of real collaboration.
Plus, keeping conversations elsewhere means you need to always remember where they are - which can be a significant time drain: A McKinsey report found employees spend an average of 1.8 hours a day searching and gathering information.
Instant context for more efficient communication
Finally, when discussing tasks with team members outside of Trello you need to spend time copying and pasting links or explaining what you’re referring to before chatting. By keeping your conversations nearer to the work - inside a Trello card - you’ll immediately have the context you need to have an efficient conversation.
Ready to give Threaded Comments a try?
Take your communications to the next level with a free 14-day trial of Threaded Comments for Trello!
Related Content
Read moreWritten by
Dan Ivory
Product Manager
Dan is a Product Manager at Kolekti and is based in the UK. He's passionate about creating apps that boost collaborative work management in Trello and monday.com.
LinkedIn →
LinkedIn →
Related Content
Read more