Does your company constantly miss deadlines? With Slack Lists, there are no more excuses.

Slack, a subsidiary of Salesforce, announces the new list feature. As the name suggests, lists within Slack allow you to create lists to organize projects. Slack lists are designed to ensure that your conversations are translated into concrete actions, says CEO Denise Dresser.

Slack points to two studies to justify the need for lists. A 2021 study by Wellingtone concluded that only three projects are completed within the expected time and budget. A more recent study by the Wall Street Journal points to a surplus of applications that leads to silos within the organization.

Actions instead of words

Slack wants to make sure that from now on you have no excuses to meet your deadlines. Companies that use Slack to discuss projects might as well use the application to monitor projects, it says. Slack lists are intended to provide an overview of the project.

Slack lists consist of several columns. The leftmost column contains a short description and then from left to right the status, priority level, who the task is assigned to and the date by which it must be completed. For each individual entry in the list, a separate thread can be started in which you can also tag colleagues to ask for advice or follow up on the task.

Slack is rolling out the lists to paying customers starting today. The rollout will take several weeks.

More than a chat app

With the addition of Slack Lists, Salesforce’s hand is becoming more and more visible. When Salesforce acquired the application, Slack was still considered “the business chat app.” Now, Slack is increasingly evolving into a broader collaboration hub and moving into the project management space. This development will make rival tools like Trello and Asana sweat, although the latter has an original answer.