Leantime - An Open Source and Self Hosted Project Management Solution

Are you in search of a project management solution that is open source and allows self hosting? I've seen Leantime mentioned a few times around the communities and today it's time to take a closer look at it. So get ready to organize your team and have your startup, company or organization back on track with peace of mind.

What is Leantime?

Leantime is a lean open source project management system for startups and innovators to make your ideas reality.

Leantime Features:

• Task management using kanban boards, table and calendar views
• Idea boards & idea kanban boards
• Research boards using the Lean Canvas
• Milestone management using Gantt charts
• Timesheet management
• Retrospectives
• Project dashboards
• Project reports
• Multiple user roles (client, team member, client manager, manager, administrator)
• Two-Factor Authentication
• LDAP integration
• Integrations with Mattermost, Slack & Zulip
• Export timesheets, tasks and milestones to CSV
• File storage with AWS S3 or local file system
• Available in English, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, German, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Vietnamese (Viet Nam), Chinese (S), Chinese (T)

When everyone is offering the same or similar features… it’s hard to know what system is right for you. A system that meets your needs can determine the trajectory of your work – are you building great things or merely good things? Success is up to you — we’re here to help you get there.

Install Leantime using Docker Compose

I installed Leantime using this Docker Compose stack using a MySQL database. It took about 20 seconds to run the install and get into the installation web portal. From there, register an email, password, name and company name to setup the database.

version: '3.3'

services:
   db:
     image: mysql:5.7
     container_name: mysql_leantime
     volumes:
       - db_data:/var/lib/mysql
     restart: always
     environment:
         MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: '321.qwerty'
         MYSQL_DATABASE: 'leantime'
         MYSQL_USER: 'admin'
         MYSQL_PASSWORD: '321.qwerty'
     command: --character-set-server=utf8 --collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci
   web:
     image: leantime/leantime:latest
     container_name: leantime
     environment:
         LEAN_DB_HOST: 'mysql_leantime'
         LEAN_DB_USER: 'admin'
         LEAN_DB_PASSWORD: '321.qwerty'
         LEAN_DB_DATABASE: 'leantime'
     ports:
       - "80:80"
     depends_on:
       - db
volumes:
    db_data: {}

Once you get logged into Leantime for the first time you can choose to take a tour or start a new project.

Let's take a quick look at Leantime dashboard to see the different areas and pages.

We believe every team should have access to tools that make work efficient — resulting in the best outcomes. Our mission is to commoditize project management.  Open Source Software makes that possible by allowing more managers to access the tools we offer while remaining flexible enough to integrate with existing workflows.

Leantime Mobile Views and Responsiveness

Browsing the Leantime web application on my iPhone was a good experience. The pages are responsive to the mobile size and adding items was a breeze.

Final Notes and Thoughts

Leantime is a great solution for project management that checks all the boxes. Having 2FA for added security for any self hosted application such as Leantime, is a vital asset to have.

Leantime setup was straightforward with minimal effort needed. The navigation in the dashboard is user friendly and something I love most about Leantime. It's not over complicated and jammed with tons of different links and settings you won't ever use or look at. Page load times are quick and responsive while navigating different areas in the dashboard.

You can follow the project and code on the open source Leantime Github repo. If you find Leantime useful, be sure to give it a star while you are there!