Make the task-board the central communication tool
Your task board should be the source of truth for all the work your team is up to. Most times the team must communicate about work in progress. And if so, that communication should happen in the context of work. Almost every task board out there allows you to have conversations inside a task. You can tag people on the team to get their attention on the task and if you’re interested in updates about a specific task, most tools allow you to “watch” it, so you get updates about it.
When you make your task board the primary communication interface for the team, you’ll gain two huge advantages.
You only have one place to track communication about work in progress. The tools allow you to be specific in how you choose to communicate. For example, you can set up the tool to generate notifications only for the tasks you’ve signed up for and the tasks you’re watching.
Every task has an audit log attached to it in the form of contextual conversations. Anyone can look at a card, examine its details - i.e., the description, attachments and comments and know what’s happening with it. You don’t need a manager to keep asking people about updates.