If you’re looking for a better approach to your company’s projects, investing in project management software can improve your processes and help you make the most of your team’s work. In addition to cost-effectiveness, open-source project management software comes with a major advantage over conventional proprietary solutions: the ultimate customizability.
Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders
In this article, we’ll explore our top five picks for open-source project management software products, and guide you on how to find the right option for your needs.
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Best Open-Source Project Management Software
Open-source project management software refers to solutions that are developed collaboratively and made freely available to the public. Open-source means anyone can modify, distribute and utilize the software without any licensing fees, providing users with greater flexibility, customization options and cost-effectiveness.
Open-source project management tools offer a wide range of features to assist teams in planning, tracking and coordinating their projects effectively. From task management and scheduling to collaboration and reporting, these software options empower teams to streamline their project workflows and enhance productivity.
Now, let’s get into our list of the top five open-source project management software options on the market today.
Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders
OpenProject
OpenProject is an open-source project management software that helps teams plan, track and collaborate on their projects. It offers features like task management, scheduling, resource allocation and progress monitoring. It can be customized and integrated with other tools, and benefits from an active community of developers and users.
Users can create projects, define tasks, assign them to team members and visualize project timelines using interactive Gantt charts. With collaboration capabilities and support for agile methodologies, OpenProject promotes transparent teamwork and efficient project management.
Project planning in OpenProject. Source
Top Benefits
- Total Visibility: Multi-project views via Gantt charts and timelines provide comprehensive insight into each individual project as well as all team projects on the whole. View all activities, phases and milestones within projects and subprojects.
- Resource Creation: Forums and wikis not only foster discussion and collaboration among team members, but also provide a repository for their insights and discoveries that can be leveraged for future projects and training purposes.
- Better Collaboration: Manage and document all team meetings in the platform, providing a centralized platform for work and record of activities. The Newsfeed provides continuous updates on projects so all team members stay informed.
Primary Features
- Work Packages: Users can define and group items in a project, such as tasks, features, risks, user stories, bugs and change requests, to capture and store important information. Easily assign work packages to team members according to priority and track progress at each step.
- Time Tracking: Team members can log time spent on a project directly, either from the work package, current activity or from their personal dashboard. The software automatically calculates labor costs according to hours logged and hourly rates set by administrators.
- Task List: Get an overview of all the work that needs to be completed for a project, including priority level, assignees, task deadlines and progress.
- Team Planner: Track the current progress of work packages or individual tasks and dependencies by assignee. Get an overview of each team member’s work in a weekly or biweekly view, and adjust it as necessarily.
- Team Collaboration: Comments and notifications allow team members to stay in touch as they collaborate. Add watchers to a task or project to ensure everyone stays informed on changes or updates.
Limitations
- No native mobile application.
- Lacks the ability to expand and collapse tasks with multiple dependencies.
- Lacks comprehensive resource management features.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
GanttProject
GanttProject is a project management software designed to assist teams in planning, scheduling and tracking their projects. It provides a user-friendly interface and a comprehensive set of features that enable users to create tasks, define dependencies, assign resources and monitor progress.
GanttProject offers interactive Gantt charts, allowing users to visualize project timelines, milestones, and task relationships and collaborate on tasks in real time. A free and open-source software, GanttProject offers a cost-effective solution for effective project management, empowering teams to successfully execute their projects.
Adjusting project timelines in GanttProject. Source
Top Benefits
- Skill Matching: Select and assign personnel to tasks according to skill and their current assignments, ensuring each team member is set up to have the optimal workload.
- Increased Efficiency: The scheduling algorithm helps determine task start dates and durations, taking into account various potential constraints to make the overall project duration as short as possible. It automatically reassesses timelines with each update to project tasks or dependencies.
- Better Insights: Track work progress using Gantt charts that visualize the status of project completion, indicating what work is left and whether or not the team is on schedule. Generate comprehensive reports that summarize projects once they’re complete.
Primary Features
- Tasks and Subtasks: Break down projects into manageable steps with tasks and subtasks, and distribute them to team members. The software automatically calculates start and end dates and durations for main tasks based on their dependencies.
- Resource Management: The resource chart view displays current resource-related activities, including under- and over-utilization, making it easier to reallocate as necessary.
- Calendar: Track all projects and project-related activities on a comprehensive team calendar. Filter by tasks or assignees to track specific threads.
- Milestones: Set up milestones at the end of summary tasks to create concrete goals and track progress. Automatically show task deadlines to structure team efforts.
- Baselines: Compare current project status and progress with previous closed projects in terms of key criteria like dates, resource assignments, durations and costs.
Limitations
- Doesn’t offer resource leveling.
- Doesn’t offer comprehensive team collaboration tools.
- Lacks document control features.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Orangescrum
Orangescrum is a project management software that helps teams streamline their project workflows and enhance collaboration. With its intuitive interface and feature-rich environment, teams can effectively plan, organize and execute projects.
Orangescrum offers task management, time tracking and resource allocation functionalities, allowing users to assign tasks, monitor progress and ensure efficient resource utilization. Its flexibility and scalability make it suitable for teams of all sizes, helping them achieve successful project outcomes.
User dashboard in Orangescrum. Source
Top Benefits
- Streamlined Communication: In-app chat lets team members communicate directly, as individuals or in groups. Share files with any user or team. Chat history keeps a record of conversations for audit and future reference.
- Better Collaboration: Team members can tag each other and comment directly on tasks to make each other aware of changes and collaborate on tasks. Notifications make sure every assignee on a task stays informed of its status.
- Better Insights: Automated daily check-ins provide updates on project progress. The Sprint Velocity chart identifies how much work has been completed, and estimates how much a given team or team member can realistically handle during a sprint.
Primary Features
- Agile Project Planning: Use the built-in Scrum template to create backlogs and run sprints. The software supports key aspects of Agile methodologies, including epics, stories and story points.
- Resource Management: Use the resource utilization view to see where team members are spending their time. Filter data for a specific project, time period or assignee.
- Time Tracking: Allow team members to automatically track time spent on tasks. View logged hours on charts that visualize daily progress.
- Bug Tracking: Document bugs with detailed profiles, including information like severity, bug detection phase, bug category, client, bug origin, resolution, bug owner, impacted area, environment and attachment. The bug listing page shows the bug status for all projects on a single dashboard.
- Budget and Cost Management: Define and add a budget to a project. Resource-based billing rates allow users to define project costs against company profits.
Limitations
- Doesn’t have an API.
- Lacks responsive web elements.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Taiga
Taiga is a project management software that empowers teams to plan, track, and manage their projects. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Taiga allows users to create tasks, set priorities and assign them to team members.
It offers customizable Kanban boards and backlogs, providing a visual representation of project progress and allowing for efficient task management. Agile teams can easily manage sprints, user stories and iterations. Taiga’s flexibility, intuitive design and comprehensive set of features make it an ideal choice for teams looking to streamline their project management processes.
Managing sprints in Taiga. Source
Top Benefits
- Centralized Resources: Building wikis not only fosters discussion and collaboration among team members, but also provides a repository for their insights and discoveries that can be leveraged for future projects and training purposes.
- Increased Motivation: The Epics module provides goal-oriented lists to increase accountability and help team members understand their workloads. Gamification elements team board titles keep workers engaged.
- Better Insights: The estimation tool helps track and summarize progress on tasks in real time, and provides data-backed insights to use in adjusting current projects or future planning.
Primary Features
- Issue or Bug Tracking: Document issues and customize issue types, priority and severity according to project needs. Add issues to user stories, Kanban cards or sprints.
- Scrum Templates: Users can add pre-built Scrum templates to any projects created on the platform. The module contains backlogs, user stories and sprints to help structure and organize work.
- Kanban Management: Add Kanban templates to projects created in the software. Use swimlanes to categorize work items and distribute them across sub-teams, project phases and priorities.
- Customization: Customize workflows with epics and sub-tasks. Use custom stages, colors and close definition to track progress on activities and view completed deliverables. Define specific team roles and permissions.
- Reporting: Integrate with reporting platforms via Taiga’s API or Live CSV export to generate real-time reports for analysis.
Limitations
- Doesn’t provide native time tracking functionality.
- Doesn’t offer budget tracking functionality.
- Doesn’t integrate with test management tools.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Redmine
Redmine is a comprehensive project management software that enables teams to efficiently organize, track and collaborate on their projects. It offers a wide range of features, including task management, issue tracking and time tracking.
Users can create tasks, set deadlines, assign them to team members and monitor progress. Redmine also provides Gantt charts and calendar views that allow for effective project planning and visualization. Its flexible and customizable platform allows teams to adapt it to their specific project management needs.
Project dashboards in Redmine. Source
Top Benefits
- Resource Creation: Forums and wikis not only foster discussion and collaboration among team members, but also provide a repository for their insights and discoveries that can be leveraged for future projects and training purposes. Create project-level wikis or attach links to the general database.
- Better Communication: Keep all team members informed of updates and changes with email notifications. Atoms feeds automatically aggregate all activities on a project for its assignees.
- Multi-Language Support: Redmine is available in forty-nine languages. It also runs with most widespread databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle and MariaDB, and lets users authenticate against multiple LDAP.
Primary Features
- Document Management: Upload and share files to individual project Files modules, or to the general content repository.
- Custom Fields: Use custom fields to define and organize issues, time entries, projects and users. Search and filter content using fields you create.
- Time Tracking: Allow team members to manually enter time spent on tasks. Set time estimates to create structure and compare against tracked time.
- Gantt Chart and Calendar: Visualize project and task progress, including deadlines, milestones and deliverables.
- Multiple Projects and Subprojects: Manage multiple projects simultaneously from one Redmine instance. Projects can be broken down into related subprojects. Disable or enable modules at the project level.
Limitations
- Doesn’t automatically record time.
- Outdated and non-intuitive user interface.
- Doesn’t provide any native out-of-the-box integrations with help desk systems.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Software Selection Tips
Now that we’ve gone over our list of the best open-source solutions out there, let’s consider how to find the right one for your business. When it comes to making a purchasing decision, the best software for your needs might not be the “best” on the market — it should be the one that most closely matches your requirements.
Some factors you might want to consider in your search include:
- Team Size: How big is your team? Make sure the solution you choose has sufficient bandwidth to support everyone who needs to use the software.
- Complexity: If your team consists of people from different departments with distinct skill sets collaborating on the same projects, you might need a more comprehensive project management tool.
- Project Type: Some project management solutions are geared towards specific industries, methodologies or project types. Make sure the one you choose supports the work you’re doing.
- Integrations: Your project management tool should be able to integrate with other systems your organization uses. Communication apps like Slack and Gmail are some of the more obvious ones. Specialized projects, like marketing or customer support, might benefit from integrations with CRM and help desk tools.
- Budget: You need a platform that fits within your budget. Most open-source project management solutions are free, but might offer premium tiers with more advanced features and user bandwidth. Your ultimate cost could depend on the extent of features you need and the number of members on your team.
Whenever you’re evaluating software, it’s important to compare different tools according to these factors as well as any other business-specific needs you might have. If you need help figuring these out, our requirements template can help you determine which project management features you’d benefit from most.
Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders
Next Steps
Open-source project management software offers a plethora of advantages for teams and organizations. With its flexibility, customization options and cost-effectiveness, it empowers teams to take control of their projects and streamline their workflows.
The open-source nature ensures continuous improvement and innovation, thanks to a community of developers and users working together. Moreover, the wide range of features available in these software options allows teams to efficiently manage tasks, collaborate and achieve successful project outcomes.
Ready for the next step? Our free comparison report makes it easy to see how leading products stack up side by side.
So, how could your projects benefit from an open-source project management software? Let us know in the comments.
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