Project management requires efficient strategies for every process, from planning to delivery. Open-source project management software is necessary for this. Project management software is essential for organizing and managing projects at every stage.
The process is not easy; everyone on the team must work hard to complete the project well and on time. Project managers and leaders put in a lot of effort to coordinate everything.
A single mistake can have a big impact on the team’s quality, turnaround times, and overall image and culture of the company. A project management tool can help you avoid risks and inefficiencies and ensure you finish your project on time and satisfy your clients.
Check out this preview of the top open-source project management software. Below, I have provided a post where I discuss the details of each based on my personal experience.
Let’s discuss these tools and how they can assist you.
What is Project Management Software?
Project management software is a helpful tool for planning projects, allocating resources, scheduling tasks, and improving coordination among team members. It effectively helps project managers, users, and stakeholders handle budgeting, cost management, documentation, quality management, and administration.
A project management tool helps improve team productivity and ensures timely delivery of quality projects. Project management software often includes several common features, such as:
- Project planning
- Scheduling tasks
- Allocating resources
- Tracking progress
- Creating roadmaps
- Bug tracking
- Budgeting
- Ensuring security and data privacy
- Release planning
- Reporting and analytics
Project management software makes tracking different aspects of a project easier.
Top Open Source Project Management Software 2024
Here are a few free and open-source project management tools you can consider.
OpenProject
OpenProject is a user-friendly open-source project management software that is agile, efficient, classic, and hybrid. You can protect your privacy with top-notch security measures for your data. Installing it in your infrastructure gives you complete control and ownership of your data.
The tool helps you understand your data and storage without any outside influence. It will help your team work more productively, enjoyably, and quickly. Your team can track their work, improve results, and easily organize and distribute tasks to team members.
OpenProject consolidates all your communication needs in one convenient location. Improve teamwork using shared timelines to visualize and create project plans, enhancing creativity and experience.
Break down the activities, create a plan, and communicate it to everyone involved. Ensure everyone understands what needs to be done and when the project must be completed. Agile teams aim to improve their work with each iteration by measuring, learning, and building to deliver faster and better results.
OpenProject offers tools for implementing agile methodologies such as Kanban and Scrum in product development. This community is great for developers, open-source enthusiasts, businesses, and more. They can easily find the right setup with a choice between on-site and flexible hosting options.
The on-premises enterprise option offers top-notch support, security features, and professional services for self-hosted OpenProject. Please provide the number of users so we can calculate your price. Get your application up and running for just $405 per year for 5 users. Select the support options and subscription period that suit your needs.
Website: https://www.openproject.org
Focalboard
Are you looking for a different option than Notion, Asana, and Trello? You can try Focalboard, an open-source and self-hosted project management software.
The Kanban board view helps you organize, manage, track, and define work across your teams. There are two editions available.
Focalboard Personal Desktop is a user-friendly app for managing personal and to-do projects on your computer. The system runs on a local server for the best performance and speed.
The Focalboard Personal Server is a server you can host to improve collaboration with your team.
To select project tasks from various templates, click “add new boards.”
Customize the created date, priority, sort, filter, and group by settings to suit your preference. You can move cards between columns to change their group property. You can edit the cards anytime to see the properties, content, and comments.
Table views allow you to see all the cards in one place. You can hover over the title to open a card. In addition, each board has card and board templates that can be customized for your team. You can have a desktop on both Mac and Windows or a personal server on Ubuntu.
Website: https://www.focalboard.com
ERPNext
Improve your daily work routine with ERPNext, an open-source project management software. You can use it to organize tasks, schedule, plan, and analyze projects with your team to speed up work.
ERPNext helps you stay organized by keeping track of project deadlines and providing a clear view of the plan. Simplify your projects by managing everything from one workspace and using a task-driven approach.
With ERPNext, you can easily collaborate by breaking down projects into smaller tasks and assigning them to your team members. You can track your project’s progress and efficiency through priorities, a clear scope, milestones, and estimated timelines.
In addition, ERPNext allows you to easily share and upload multimedia files such as images, documents, and videos. Improve communication by using auto-replies for incoming emails.
Easily access up-to-date insights to manage expenses, budgets, and projects effectively. Keep track of spending and monitor budget usage. You can also use it to create software for open-source projects.
Website: https://erpnext.com/open-source-projects
Taskcafe
Taskcafe is a free project management tool that makes it easy to manage tasks. It uses a Kanban board interface, allowing you to set due dates, add checklists, and use labels. You will find all your assigned tasks in the “My Tasks” view.
You’ll also have options for personal projects, task comments, and task activities. Are you looking for an alternative to NextCloud or Trello? Try Taskcafe! It’s a user-friendly tool can streamline your workflow and make project management a breeze. The project is currently developing early and has many helpful and distinctive features.
Website: https://github.com/JordanKnott/taskcafe
Orangescrum
Try Orangescrum, an open-source, scalable, and secure project management tool. It’s perfect for managing agile and simple projects for your teams. Strategic planning helps you create and execute plans effectively, ensuring your team finishes projects on time for success.
Orangescrum helps you plan strategically for better efficiency and results. In addition to making project plans, you can also easily monitor and deliver them. It also helps with real-time collaboration and using resources efficiently when assigning roles to your teammates.
Orangescrum helps you increase success rates by integrating your workflow with visual project planning—access real-time data in your dashboards to gain insights into portfolio performance and initiatives. In addition, you can keep track of project expenses and resource costs to improve profitability.
Protect your data using RBAC and Single Sign-On. You can download Orangescrum on Android or iOS devices to manage your work on the go. Also, centralize your project information so it can be easily accessed anywhere.
The startup plan is excellent for startups looking to manage their work effectively. It costs only $9 per month and allows up to 10 users. With this plan, you can enjoy unlimited tasks and projects, access to Gantt charts, track the status of tasks, set reminders, and get 5 GB of storage. Additionally, you can also invite 5 guest users to collaborate with you.
Website: https://www.orangescrum.com/open-source
Taiga
Use Taiga, a project management tool, to deliver your project on time and within budget. Taiga offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features for agile teams. You can work with your team to set goals and use their expertise.
To ensure timely completion, align tasks and prioritize deliverables for each team member. Taiga helps you communicate with your teammates easily to share task progress, which is essential in management. Also, allow your teammates to see what’s currently happening and review the tasks that have been finished.
Taiga helps improve transparency within your team by providing clear updates on project status and resource allocation. It also enables you to understand the effort needed to complete the project. The interface is user-friendly and helps improve work and task performance.
You can easily modify workflows and incorporate additional features without any complicated setup between projects. Taiga provides reliability, independence, adaptability, flexibility, security, performance, and stability to support your project delivery.
Get up to 5 private projects, unlimited public projects, and up to 300MB of storage for free when you sign up. Choose the $5 per user per month plan to get more benefits.
Website: https://www.taiga.io
Twake
Twake is a digital workplace that helps you boost productivity in your organization. This tool lets you quickly communicate with your team, invite others to join, share files, work together on documents, and have video meetings.
With Twake, you can easily manage your entire project. You can create new tasks, track their progress, and assign work and deadlines to your teammates. The drag-and-drop file manager makes accessing and managing your stored and shared documents simple.
Easily manage labels and versions and edit your files. You can create new team events, attach video links for conference meetings, configure notifications for members, attach tasks and files, and set deadlines when needed.
In addition, easily install the necessary application for your workflow using Twake. Applications are separate from files, calendars, and discussions. You can use different formats, like Google Docs, Libre Office, MS Office, etc., to work on the same document.
Twake keeps your files secure by encrypting its database. You can also choose who can access the files. Your data and files are safely stored in France. It follows GDPR guidelines and enables secure transfers using HTTPS/SSL encryption.
Website: https://twake.app/en/
Wekan
Wekan is another project management software on this list. It is free and open-source, and it features a Kanban board. The Kanban board is an excellent tool for keeping your work organized. It helps you maintain a to-do list, work in a team, plan holidays, and see the current status of your projects.
Wekan improves productivity by giving you more time to focus on essential tasks. You can easily install it on your computer or server with just one click. Wekan is used in many countries and supports 63 languages.
This tool has a user-friendly interface lets you manage everything in real time. It also works on different platforms. To install Wekan on your computer, you must meet some basic requirements.
To use Wekan, you’ll need a 64-bit Linux Snap or Sandstorm/Windows/Mac operating system. Make sure you have CPUs that support MongoDB and Node.js. Having at least 1GB of free RAM for Wekan is recommended. Additionally, your system server should have a minimum of 4GB RAM and sufficient disk space.
Website: https://github.com/wekan/wekan
ProjectLibre
Are you looking for a management tool? ProjectLibre is a great choice!
It is a free option similar to Microsoft Project. ProjectLibre works on Mac, Windows, and Linux and can open MS Project files. It also helps teams manage multiple projects.
ProjectLibre is available in 29 different languages. You can easily switch the language by selecting it from the drop-down menu. It has Gantt charts, PERT charts, network diagrams, RBS/WBS charts, earned value costing, resource histograms, etc.
Website: https://www.projectlibre.com
Leantime
Leantime is a project management tool designed for innovators and startups who prefer a lean approach. It is designed to work perfectly from start to finish. This tool is open-source and uses PHP, JavaScript, and MySQL.
The features of this tool include Kanban boards for managing tasks, calendar and table views, Gantt charts for managing milestones, and Lean Canvas for research boards. It also provides timesheet management, project dashboards, retrospectives, reports, two-factor authentication, and multiple user roles.
Leantime can be integrated with Slack, Zulip, and Mattermost. It also allows you to export tasks, milestones, and timesheets to CSV. This tool can store files locally or on AWS S3. It is available in English, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch.
Website: https://github.com/leantime
Plane
Plane is an open-source platform that can be used as an alternative to Jira for managing projects and products. It helps create a task-tracking system that can adapt to different project management frameworks like Agile, Waterfall, and more.
It helps users manage tasks, plan and organize work, document information, improve productivity, and keep data secure. The Command K menu lets you quickly search, manage, and navigate the platform.
These blank pages make it simple to record important information like problems, plans for future cycles, and specific details about modules. In addition, these simple pages can be synced with your tasks, making it easier to work together and stay organized with important information.
The Plane is designed to be secure, with data encryption and regular security updates to keep your data and privacy safe.
The Plane platform works well with other programs like Notion and Slack. It makes it easy for users to manage their Workspace and projects.
Users can quickly address issues and notifications by accessing the tools directly within the platform without switching between different interfaces. This method of project management helps things run smoothly and boosts productivity.
The Plane is made to improve performance, privacy, and workflow. The user-friendly platform allows you to customize the workplace to suit your needs.
Website: https://plane.so/
ZenTao
ZenTao is a popular tool for agile teams for professional development and project management. Our platform serves top clients like Haier, Dell Technologies, Hitachi, Walmart, Lenovo, Sharp, and other leading brands.
This platform is all-in-one, simple, and centralized. It helps teams communicate, transfer files, assign tasks, and streamline project management. The platform provides both on-premise and cloud options.
The features of this software include Sprint Planning, Bug Tracking, Roadmap Creation, Gantt Chart Analysis, Burndown Chart Generation, and Kanban Management. It also incorporates CMMI/Scrum concepts to help with successful software lifecycle project management.
ZenTao has been China’s top Test Management Tool for five years, with a 43% market share in testing management tools.
Website: https://www.zentao.pm/
Tuleap
Tuleap is an all-in-one software that has won multiple awards. It provides full support for Agility and DevOps to its customers. Help both agile and non-agile teams by offering features like real-time task planning and project tracking to improve efficiency.
This tool is open-source and designed for both Agile Management and Software Engineering. It stands out among Jira alternatives for Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and hybrid work methods.
Its features include project management, code versioning, tracking as code review, bug tracking, and test management.
Tuleap has two editions: Enterprise Edition for mission-critical environments and Community Version for users who want to try Tuleap for free.
Website: https://www.tuleap.org
Why do you Need Project Management Software?
Large organizations with multiple projects and large teams may need help completing them. Several tasks require your attention, like coming up with ideas, making plans, carrying out the tasks, and delivering the final product. Every step is essential for providing a high-quality project and ensuring client satisfaction, ultimately driving your business.
Doing things manually takes up a significant amount of time, money, and effort. Ineffective project management can lead to delayed deadlines and compromised quality.
Project management software simplifies project completion. It helps you improve each step to deliver projects on time without sacrificing quality. It strengthens customer relationships, fosters trust, and maintains a strong brand image.
Using a project management tool has several benefits.
Streamlines workflow
A project management tool helps you streamline your workflow throughout the project lifecycle. Using automation can help you avoid tedious and time-consuming manual tasks. The tool can automate different processes.
You can easily assign tasks, schedule them effectively, monitor progress, track implementation, integrate with other tools, and use additional features to complete projects successfully in less time and with high quality.
Centralizes all information in the tool
During the project’s actual work phase, there is a chance of misinformation or mismanagement occurring. Employees may feel overwhelmed by the workload, number of files, and distant project goals.
By using a project management tool with a centralized dashboard, all team members can easily share information and stay updated. It’s important to avoid interruptions, confusion, and burnout to ensure your team works smoothly and efficiently.
Promotes smooth communication flow
Lack of communication can make projects less efficient. Creating misinformation or disputes is undesirable, especially during work or at any time. Emails can be slow, and sometimes you won’t get urgent answers.
A project management tool improves team communication by enabling direct commenting, healthy discussions, and quick feedback on the project. It also ensures data security.
Enhances team transparency
Being transparent with your team helps to build trust and encourages better collaboration. When everyone does not readily see tasks, processes, and progress, it causes doubts and extra work to keep track of each step.
Using a project management tool helps increase transparency. It keeps everyone involved in the project informed about its status and processes. It helps them understand what to do next and organize their tasks.
Increases cost-efficiency
Manual and repetitive tasks take up time, effort, and money. Using a single software for planning, organizing tasks, collaborating with others, and tracking progress can save you money and time.
Benefits of Self-hosted Project Management Tools
When looking for project management software, you’ll find plenty of options. Choose software that fits your team size, budget, and requirements. You can use self-hosted project management software here.
The advantages of using the former are that the source code is freely available for everyone to use, and you can modify and distribute it according to your requirements. Open-source and free project management tools let you change the code to improve the software by adding features, fixing bugs, and more.
Wrapping Up
Project management software speeds up your work improves communication and saves time and money. I hope the open-source and free project management tools mentioned above help you achieve these benefits and complete each project.