Sonos’ public Trello board is not impressive

To prevent this from blowing up any further, we need to talk about what the Sonos situation will be in September.

For some quick context, Sonos in May updated its app and the underlying system software that controls its family of wireless speakers in preparation for the next generation of products — including the Sonos Ace headphones, which arrived just a few weeks later. That update went badly, and otherwise, Sonos’ existing (and not-so-cheap) systems were left in varying degrees of disarray.

It quickly became clear that something had gone very wrong, though it’s important to remember that everyone’s Sonos setup will be different, from the hardware itself to the music services used to the network conditions that connect it all. (That it ever worked this well still feels a bit magical.) And we’ll continue to note that Sonos acknowledged its problems relatively quickly on the Sonos subreddit . But that’s not the same as the public admission that didn’t come until about two months later, when CEO Patrick Spence issued a public apology just before further explanation during the company’s August earnings conference call.

Throughout all this time, Sonos has been updating its app and platform and fixing issues every few weeks. That’s a good thing.

But as I spent the Sunday morning of my Labor Day weekend sipping coffee and working on my Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, two things happened. First, I got an email from Sonos warning me that this was my last chance to save 20% on a piece of hardware that, given the current state of the software, would only disappoint me. And then I remembered that I had ignored the “news” that Sonos had released a public Trello board so we could all see what it was working on.

While I applaud transparency, it’s an illusion. Not everything has to be done openly. Sonos has been letting people know about its rebuilding plans on the Sonos subreddit for weeks and months, and more formally on its website. A public Trello board is really unnecessary, and is perhaps at best a subtle advertisement for Trello. (I’ve used Trello many times. It’s great.) It’s also another public place where someone at Sonos needs to keep up with internal documentation. (Sorry, intern!)

At this point, I don’t care what Sonos has to say about fixes. I don’t care about roadmaps, schedules, and Trello boards. I don’t really expect to be thrilled because Spence said customers will be back someday.

I want the correct speaker group to actually activate when I select it. I want the volume control to not take 10 or 15 seconds, if at all. I want the search to not suck.

I care about what Sonos does. I care if it fixes things. Everything else is a distraction.