In 2023 I started a secure-communications product with a small team: me (founder, product owner, business owner, sysadmin), one developer who needed clear specs and timelines, and two part-time QA specialists. That product is still private (to be released by eoy), so I won't name it here. What I will tell you is how we managed the work — and how that frustration became Agila.
We started in a spreadsheet
Like a lot of tiny teams, we began in a Google Sheet. It worked until it didn't: ownership got fuzzy, status lived in cells nobody trusted, and "what's blocked?" meant scrolling and guessing.
So I went looking for a real project tool.
OpenProject: capable, but heavy
We landed on OpenProject. It was okay. It had a Kanban view, which is mostly what we used. But the overall feel was closer to Microsoft Project than to a lightweight board: lots of structure, lots of ceremony, more software than a small team needed to ship.
Vikunja: lighter, still not ours
We moved to Vikunja and used it for a few months. It was more approachable than OpenProject. We still never really liked it. It didn't match how we wanted to move work day to day.
Jira was never on the table. I've used it in enough organizations to know it's powerful — and far too big for our needs.
Building our way out
I got fed up. AI-assisted coding was becoming practical enough to try for real, so I used it to build the minimal Kanban pieces we actually needed for our own flow. Not a clone of everything. Just enough board to keep specs, status, and next steps honest.
That's how the project started.
Then it became Agila
In parallel with managing our primary product, I kept going. Why stop at "good enough for us"? The Kanban side project grew into what Agila is today: an open-source, multi-view agile project management tool — free to self-host on your own infrastructure, or hosted if you want us to run it.
As we add more people to the development team, that choice keeps fitting: enough structure for shared ownership and QA without the ceremony tax of tools we already rejected.
What Agila is now
Agila is a collaborative Kanban workspace with real-time updates, soft WIP, optional sprints, Google / GitHub / Microsoft 365 SSO, and an optional AI agent that uses your API key.
Day-to-day pieces we care about:
- Kanban-first, with list, Gantt, and calendar when you need them
- Edit cards in place — stay on the board instead of living in modals
- Soft WIP that warns when a column is overloaded, without freezing the team
- Column policy notes so entry/exit rules sit on the board
- Admin / User / Viewer roles plus per-board membership
- Full product on GitHub — self-host free, or use hosted plans
We're younger than Jira or Asana. Integrations and native mobile are still maturing. We publish an honest comparison that includes where other tools still win.
Drag-and-drop with ~200 cards
A board that stutters trains people to abandon it. We stress-tested Agila with ~200 cards and spent time actually dragging them around — across columns and up/down long boards.
What we saw:
- Jira often hides other columns while you're dragging. That "helps" the drag, but you lose spatial context mid-move.
- Many competitors feel fine for short cross-column moves, then get sluggish when you drag up or down across multiple screenfuls.
- Agila stayed extremely fast in both directions — horizontal and vertical — even with a loaded board.
Not a lab chart. Just the practical test: does the board stay usable when it's full of real work?
Built because we needed it
Agila wasn't a pitch deck looking for a problem. It was a small team managing a serious product who refused to live in tools that were either too heavy or never quite felt right — until we built our own.
If you're evaluating boards, try the interactive preview on agila.dev, read the compare page, or poke the open-source repo. We share updates on X at @agila_app.Sharp feedback welcome. We built this to use it.
