G'day 👋
Organizing our messages across all of our apps can be a nightmare. Who said what? Where did they say it? This is especially true when you work across teams in a big company.
We think a lot about how teams communicate. We were talking about our own features and wondered:
What makes Slack's threads such a good feature?
We came up with eight reasons why we think Slack and threaded comments in general have such a big impact on how we work.
1. Noise Reduction
Keeping our comms channels clean is a challenge. The messages never seem to stop coming. Threaded conversations let us gather related messages and updates under an original post.
Threads keep related messages together. And it makes them easier to find and come back to.
On bigger teams, threaded comments are far easier to navigate and work with. You can tune into the threads you need and tune out the ones you don't.
2. Faster Response Times
Efficient communication means timely, direct, and relevant responses to original notes.
Threads in Slack (and in Jira) connect response to original messages. It's easy to find and respond to messages, requests, questions. Threads keep context intact and minimize our need to scroll through tons of unrelated messages.
Have you ever felt like people take too long to reply?
Maybe they lost your original post. With so many messages across so many tools, it may be hard to get to them all.
When it's easier to find the right post or comment, people can and will respond a lot faster.
3. Subtopics Stay Organized
We all use Slack channels. Threads let us go one level deeper, keeping our conversations organized both by Channel and subtopic. We liken this to comments on Jira issues. The issue is like a channel and threaded comments are like the subtopics.
Conversations can happen in the context of a channel. We can also go deeper with threaded conversations about the details. And everything stays organized.
4. Saved for Reference
Keeping older discussions in an easy-to-read format is important for future reference. Threads act like a repository of important, but maybe older and not relevant in the moment, conversations.
If you've ever scrolled a lot of comments on a Jira issue, trying to figure out who said what to who else, it can be head exploding 🤯
Threads make it a lot easier to reference decisions, ideas, and discussions by grouping the relevant messages together.
5. Tracking To-dos
Managing and keeping tabs on work is simplified with threads. Not everyone uses a Jira board or a task list to track work. Some of that happens in comments and messages.
Threads can be treated as a dedicated space for relevant updates, discussions, and files related to a task.
As mentioned before, with the Channels and threads structure, it's easier to keep context around to-dos. It's not a great way to manage tasks, but threads certainly help if Slack or comments are where you do it.
6. Easier for Others to Join In
It can be hard to follow conversation when threads aren't used. With threaded conversations, every team member has the opportunity to get full context and join in the convo.
Slack threads make it easy for more people to quickly get up to speed AND to weigh in on discussions.
7. Cross-Team Conversations
Multiple teams might be in a Slack channel. Threads help those teams have the discussions they need while maintaining that higher level Channel context.
It also means focused conversations can happen between teams without overwhelming the main communication channel. This keeps the channel clean and easy to sort through. Even for newbies.
Clear, Efficient, Effective Team Comms
Slack's threads give us an organized, efficient, and easy-to-follow platform for team communication.
Threads reduce noise. They help people answer (and get answers) quickly. They make it easier to preserve discussions for future reference.
They help us track tasks, encourage people to join in, and make it easier for cross-functional teams to work together.
Threads simplify and enhance communication for teams no matter what time zone they're in or how complicated their work is.
You don't need a formal policy to force threads on people, but the more you can build threaded conversations into your work, the faster and more effective you'll be.
What say you?
Do your teams make the most of threads?
Thanks for reading & Hooroo!
