Open source project management is the future

Chances are that you’re familiar with the concept of open source software in some capacity — many of our users find us because they are specifically looking for an open source project management system. Open source software is software code has been published to the public and shared in a way that encourages collaboration on development and is intended to democratize how we (the world) use software.

Here at Leantime, we see open source project management as the future of project development and business success.

Open source: “Open source software is code that is designed to be publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. Open source software is developed in a decentralized and collaborative way, relying on peer review and community production.” – Redhat

Cool, but what does this have to do with Leantime?

Project management systems are everywhere and it’s the same “value propositions”. Do quicker! See all your tasks at once! Varying levels of feature overload. The systems aren’t decreasing cognitive load in a world overloaded with cognitive demands. And they’re expensive.

Project management isn’t simple and if it was, we could all survive on notebooks and sheets.

How we “do” project management is still evolving

We are still hunters and gatherers in our core — that means we often default to execution before we move to planning. Balancing our bias for action takes hard work. It’s easy to oversimplify; or overcomplicate and then to miss steps. Anticipating the next thing is hard. Tasks aren’t easy to estimate.

What does it mean to be done, anyway? Then add in 2020, 2021, 2022… the new hybrid & remote workforces and never ending inflation?

We’re limited by resources and scaling is expensive

Good project management practices remain a business luxury.

Studies show that on average, companies spend $218.58 per employee a month ($2,623/yr) on SaaS products. The costs are going up and this means that scaling, planning projects, or just building something cool has become a privilege held captive by inflation.

This is also why we’ve settled on a choose your own adventure type of pricing. Every team and need is going to be different. In order to make this accessible to every team as they grow, we wanted to create a pricing strategy that allows you to decide what works best for your team — so you get to choose: will you pay per project or per user?

Business is expensive and we need more business owners

According to McKinsey, Latinos start more businesses per capita than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. Latino owned firms grow at a rate of 12.5% annually compared to other White-owned firms at 5.3% annual growth. We are less likely to have employees, though, have less outside support and are more likely to close in the first year.

We are also less likely to have access to capital and are less likely to get funded our full ask at the bank even with the same credit scores. Our businesses get ~2.5% of venture capital.

What happens when things are complicated, we’re spread thin, we have limited resources and sh*t still needs to get done?

Enter open source software.

Open source: above and beyond

The benefit of open source software extends beyond any relationship to cost. Open source software is about the democratization of code; where generous engineers share their knowledge and skill sets with the world so they can also benefit from it. Open source software extends the traditional platform of software development and expands it into shared passion, experience, knowledge and community.

Open source means that the platform that you use today has contributions made to it by the community that has rallied around it. You won’t find that experience in commercial software.

We’ve been both honored to contribute and in receiving contributions from the community. When COVID has taken us so much farther from people, open source has still been here bringing us together.

In Summary: Building great ideas is for everyone

If building great ideas is for everyone, then people need access to more than a Kanban board or a to do list to grow into the next big thing.

It isn’t enough, though, that people should just have access to the organizational elements of building. For McKinsey’s statistics to catch up with other groups, we need to also make the principles of project management accessible.

Accessible without an MBA. Without education from expensive schools and programs. Without trying to balance online certifications while working a job and/or trying to build a business.

Successful project management starts at inception and that success belongs to everyone.

the most successful problem solvers spend mental energy figuring out what type of problem they are facing before matching a strategy to it

– Epstein, from the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialist World

Knowledge is best learned while being applied because it engages us entirely.

We’re open source.

Thanks for joining us on the journey.

Other articles you may be interested in reading:

• The Future of Project Management: Opinionated Software?
• Open source Idea Management Software: The best thing you can do for innovation
• About Leantime
• Open Source Gantt Tools: What are they? Why use them?