Daniel D says his small team went from a spreadsheet to OpenProject, then Vikunja, before he built Agila around the Kanban workflow they wanted. It is one founder’s account—not proof that any of those tools is right or wrong for small teams generally—but it offers a useful look at how workflow fit can matter as much as feature count.
Why the team moved beyond a spreadsheet
In his account on DEV Community, Daniel D says he started a secure-communications product in 2023 with a small team: himself, serving as founder, product owner, business owner, and sysadmin; one developer; and two part-time QA specialists. He keeps the primary product private and unnamed.
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The team initially tracked work in a spreadsheet. Daniel says ownership became unclear and status difficult to trust. They wanted a shared place to see what was being worked on and who owned it, without making work management feel more elaborate than the work itself.
What he found in OpenProject and Vikunja
OpenProject: more lifecycle structure than this team wanted
The team tried OpenProject’s Kanban view. Daniel says the broader product felt too structured and ceremonious for their small team. That is a description of their experience, not a general verdict on usability or suitability.
#1 Best Overall
OpenProject’s official introduction describes free, open-source project-management software under the GNU GPL v3, with a project lifecycle that can include work packages, agile boards, planning, roadmaps, budgets, time tracking, and documentation. Its product page also presents agile, classic, and hybrid project management, including Gantt charts, backlogs, and sprints. That breadth helps explain why a team seeking a narrower Kanban experience might perceive a mismatch; it does not establish that OpenProject is inherently too much for small teams.
OpenProject documents three editions: Community, which users install on their own premises; Enterprise Cloud, hosted by OpenProject; and Enterprise on premises, with Enterprise add-ons and support. The choice therefore includes both workflow scope and who operates the software.
Vikunja: approachable, but still not the desired flow
Daniel says the team used Vikunja for a few months and found it more approachable, but that it still did not match how they wanted to move work. He also says they did not consider Jira because, in his view, it was more tool than they needed. These are the author’s reasons for his team’s choices, not comparative usability findings.
Vikunja’s official features page describes project organization and sharing, assignments, and list, Gantt, table, and Kanban views. Its homepage describes self-hosted use as well as a hosted cloud option. Those documented capabilities can help a prospective user compare options, but they do not settle whether Vikunja’s workflow will suit a particular team.
Rank #3
- book
- A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Seventh Edition and The Standard for Project Management (ENGLISH)
Why build Agila instead of adopting another suite?
Daniel says AI-assisted coding had become practical enough for him to build the minimal Kanban functions his team needed rather than recreate every feature of a larger project-management suite. He describes that side project as the beginning of Agila: “That’s how the project started.”
The underlying trade-off is not simply minimal versus powerful. A small team may want enough structure to make ownership and status visible, while avoiding workflow overhead it does not use. Building a focused tool let Daniel shape the board around that preference, but his account does not establish that building or switching tools is the right answer for other teams.
Rank #4
- Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects
- Harvard Business Review Press
- BLANK BOOK
What Agila is described as offering
Daniel describes Agila as an open-source agile project-management tool with free self-hosting and a hosted version. The feature set below is as he reports it; it has not been independently verified here against the live product, repository, plans, or release history.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →- Views and planning: Kanban, list, Gantt, and calendar views, with optional sprints.
- Board behavior: inline card editing, soft work-in-progress warnings, and notes for column policies.
- Access: Admin, User, and Viewer roles, plus board membership.
- Sign-in and AI: optional Google, GitHub, and Microsoft 365 single sign-on, and an optional AI agent that uses the user’s API key.
- Maturity: Daniel says integrations and native mobile support are still developing.
What the 200-card test does—and does not—show
Daniel reports testing drag-and-drop with about 200 cards, moving them horizontally between columns and vertically across long boards. He says Agila remained fast in both directions and compares the experience favorably with competitors. No timings, repeatable protocol, or independent replication are supplied, so this is an informal author-reported test, not a benchmark establishing relative performance.
As Daniel puts it, “Not a lab chart. Just the practical test: does the board stay usable when it’s full of real work?” The quote describes his test’s intent; it should not be read as a measured result beyond his account.
How to decide whether this kind of tool fits your team
Use the story as a prompt to evaluate your own workflow, rather than as a ranking of the three products. Compare the parts that affect day-to-day use:
Quick Recap
- Workflow breadth: Do you need a full project lifecycle with planning and documentation, or primarily a task board?
- Views and planning: Which views and planning features are documented, and which will your team actually use?
- Collaboration: Check how each product handles assignments, sharing, roles, and board access against your needs.
- Deployment: Decide whether you want to operate a self-hosted installation or use a hosted service; confirm the available edition and terms directly with the provider.
- Maturity and evidence: Verify the current state of integrations and mobile support, and distinguish a personal performance impression from a published, repeatable comparison.
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