How we use TXM to manage our chaotic work group

Our group

We are a small software team: six people in one Telegram group. We use that group for everything. Bug reports, feature requests, deploys, client questions, payments, “can you look at this?”.

Some numbers from the last nine weeks:

• about 4,600 messages;
• 43% of them are replies to another message;
• about 590 are screenshots or files.

We write in English and in Amharic typed in Latin letters, often both in the same sentence.

Most work in our group starts and ends the same way. Someone posts a screenshot and tags a developer. The developer answers “ok” or “on it”. A day or two later they answer “done”, or they post a build number like v1.0.452.

The problem

The group is busy, and that caused the same problems again and again:

• Requests got buried. A request from Monday is 200 messages up by Wednesday.
• We asked the same questions twice. “Is this fixed?” “Did anyone pay that bill?” “Who is doing the export?”
• Trackers went stale. We tried a spreadsheet and a board in another app. Nobody kept them up to date after the first week, because the real work was happening in the chat.
• The lead scrolled back every day to see what was still open.

We did not want to change how the team talks. We wanted the task list to follow the chat, not the other way around.

What we set up

1. We added TXM to the group as an admin. Telegram only lets a bot read all messages in a group when it is an admin (or its privacy mode is off).
2. We imported our old chat. We exported the group from Telegram Desktop and gave the file to TXM, so the board started with the work that was already open.
3. We kept talking the same way. No new rules. Nobody types commands to create tasks.

What a normal day looks like now

• Morning. Each of us types /mytasks in the group, or opens the board. It lists our open tasks, newest first. The reply deletes itself after 30 minutes, so it does not clutter the chat.
• During the day. Requests come in like before. Within 30 minutes, TXM turns them into tasks with an owner, and a due date if someone mentioned one.
• When something is finished, the person says so in the chat: “done”, “fixed”, a build number, or a screenshot of the working screen. TXM closes the task at its next update.
• The lead opens the board and filters by person to see who has what. Overdue tasks stand out in red.
• End of the day. Someone types /captured to see what was asked, started, blocked and finished today.

The numbers after nine weeks

The number we care about most: almost nine out of ten finished tasks were closed without anyone touching the board. Somebody said it was done, and that was enough.

Things that surprised us

• A build number means done. When a developer replies to a request with a version number, it means the change shipped. TXM reads it that way.
• The screenshot is often the whole request. Many requests are just a picture and someone’s name. TXM reads the picture and gives the task a clear title.
• The answer is rarely a reply to the request. Someone asks “is it deployed?” two days later, and the answer replies to that question instead. TXM follows the reply chain back to the original task.
• “ok” is not “done”. “ok”, “noted” and 👍 mean someone saw it. TXM keeps those tasks open.
• Mixed languages were not a problem. Most of our status messages mix English and Amharic, and TXM reads them fine.

What went wrong at first, and what we changed

1. The first version posted in the group. It announced every new task and posted summaries. It was noise, and people started to ignore it. We switched that off. Now TXM never posts on its own. It only answers when someone types a command.
2. The first version missed most finished work. It read each message on its own, so a one-word “done” meant nothing to it. It marked only about one in ten finished tasks as done. We rebuilt it to read reply chains, quotes and screenshots together. The numbers above are from after that change.
3. For three days it was not reading the group at all. A bug meant it only saw commands. We fixed it and imported those three days from a chat export. That is why TXM now has a history import that any group can use.

Tips if you want to try this in your group

• Make TXM an admin of the group, so it can read all messages.
• Reply to the message you are answering. It makes a short “done” clear, for TXM and for people.
• Say it when you finish. One word in the chat is enough.
• Fix mistakes on the board. If TXM gets a task wrong, change it with a tap. Your change always wins.
• Do not add new rules for the team. The whole point is that nobody has to change how they talk.

Want the details on how TXM reads a “done”? We wrote that down with examples: How TXM decides a task is done.