OpenProject Blog

OpenProject 17.8: Create and update with AI in OpenProject (Enterprise add-on)

2026-09-02T09:22:00Z

OpenProject 17.8 takes the next step in connecting AI assistants with your project work. The MCP Server introduced in OpenProject 17.2 can now create and update work packages, add comments, and manage work package relations – while respecting the permissions and business rules configured in OpenProject.

With this release, we are expanding the possibilities for AI-assisted workflows while keeping users in control. OpenProject 17.8 also brings multiple target versions for work packages, global restrictions for time entries, and further improvements to Backlogs, wikis, meetings, and more. In addition, displaying work package relations in tables is now available in the Community edition.

In this article, we highlight the most important changes and what they mean for your daily work. And, as always, please see our Release notes that contain all changes, features and bug fixes.

A quick article navigation:

AI-assisted actions with the MCP Server (Enterprise add-on)

With OpenProject 17.2, released in March 2026, we introduced the MCP Server to securely connect AI assistants to OpenProject as an Enterprise add-on in the Professional plan and higher. The MCP Server implements the open source Model Context Protocol, letting AI assistants and other tools securely interact with project data like projects, work packages, comments, and relations. Until now, this connection has focused on accessing and retrieving project information – for example, to find work packages or answer questions based on project data.

With OpenProject 17.8, AI-assisted workflows can go a step further: users can now create and update information in OpenProject through their AI assistant. The MCP Server adds write capabilities for work packages, comments, and relations, while applying the same permissions and business rules as the OpenProject interface and API.

Important
With OpenProject, users remain in control when working with AI. Extending the MCP Server with write capabilities does not mean handing control over to AI. Organizations choose which AI tools and models to connect, existing OpenProject permissions continue to apply, and users remain responsible for reviewing and acting on AI-generated results. Learn more about responsible AI in OpenProject.

Create and update work packages with AI assistance

Users can now create new work packages or update existing ones through a connected AI assistant. This includes standard work package attributes as well as custom fields, opening up AI-assisted workflows that go beyond searching and summarizing existing project information.

For example, AI assistance can be used to create demo data for a template project, giving users useful examples when they start a new project based on that template. Existing work packages can also be updated with new information without having to transfer it manually.

Add comments and manage work package relations

AI-assisted workflows can now also include comments and work package relations. The MCP Server can read and add comments as well as create and remove relations between work packages.

This makes it possible to use an AI assistant for a broader range of project management workflows while keeping the resulting information and changes in OpenProject.

Learn more about OpenProject’s MCP Server in our system admin guide.

Work package relations in tables now available in the Community edition

At OpenProject, we remain committed to our Community and to continuously strengthening the OpenProject Community edition. That’s why we regularly release selected Enterprise add-ons to the Community. With OpenProject 17.8, displaying work package relations in tables is now available in the Community edition.

Users can add relations as columns to a work package table to see related work packages directly in their configured table view. This makes dependencies and other relationships between work packages easier to identify without opening individual work packages.

Here’s an example work package table showing just two out of many options to display relations – in this case, the “Related to” relation (every work package type) and the work package type “Feature” (all relations):

Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.8

Beyond these AI updates, OpenProject 17.8 introduces several additional enhancements for planning, time tracking, agile work, collaboration, and more. We’ll give a short overview in this article. For the complete list of features, enhancements, and bug fixes, please always refer to the Release notes.

Multiple target versions for work packages

OpenProject 17.8 introduces multiple target versions for work packages. When enabled, the previous single-value Version field becomes the multi-value Target versions field, allowing users to assign a work package to more than one version.

For new OpenProject installations, target versions are enabled by default. On existing installations, administrators can enable the new functionality in the administration. Please note that this conversion cannot be reversed.

Agile improvements for bulk editing and dragging Backlogs cards to external applications

We continue to improve agile planning and working with Backlogs in OpenProject. With OpenProject 17.8, users can bulk edit work packages directly from the Backlogs view, making it easier to update multiple items at once.

Work package cards can also be dragged from Backlogs to external applications. This makes it easier to reference or share work packages when working across different tools.

Milestones and sprints in the project timeline

The Project timeline widget on the project overview now provides a more complete picture of important project dates. In addition to project phases, it now displays milestones and sprints, bringing key planning information together in one place.

Milestones link directly to their work package view, while sprints are displayed as read-only items. Links provide quick access to all milestones in the Gantt chart and to the sprints overview.

Global limits and restrictions for time entries (Enterprise add-on)

Administrators using the OpenProject Professional plan and higher can now configure global restrictions for time entries to help ensure that logged time follows their organization’s requirements. The restrictions apply across the OpenProject instance and are disabled by default, so existing behavior does not change unless an administrator enables them.

For example, administrators can limit the number of hours allowed for a single time entry or per day, prevent users from logging more hours than defined for their working day, restrict time entries on non-working days, or prevent changes to time entries from previous months.

Wiki macros available in more text editors

Wiki macros are now available in more text editors across OpenProject, including meeting descriptions, outcomes, comments, wiki pages, and text custom fields. This makes it easier to reference and create wiki pages directly from other areas of your project work.

OpenProject 17.8 also improves navigation in project wikis. The redesigned sidebar displays wiki pages in a collapsible hierarchy and includes a search to quickly find pages while keeping their position in the page structure visible.

Tip
The term “internal wiki” has been replaced with “project wiki” throughout the interface, making the distinction from external wiki integrations such as XWiki clearer.

Read about all wiki changes for 17.8 in our release notes.

Improved work package identifiers and search

OpenProject 17.8 further improves support for work package identifiers. Search results and autocompleters now prioritize exact identifier matches over similar results, making it easier to quickly find a specific work package by its identifier.

Meeting activity visible directly in work packages

Meeting-related activity is now visible directly in the Activity tab of a work package. This gives users more context about discussions and meetings connected to their work without having to navigate away from the work package.

OpenProject 17.8: Migration, installation, updates and support

Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 17.8. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, September 2, 2026.

You will find more information about all new features and changes in our Release notes and in the OpenProject Documentation.

If you need support, you can post your questions in the Community Forum, or if you are eligible for Enterprise support, please contact us and we will be happy to support you personally.

New to OpenProject? To test all features of OpenProject 17.8 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
Prefer to run OpenProject 17.8 in your own infrastructure? Here you can find the Installation guidelines for OpenProject.
Want to upgrade from a Community version to try out the Enterprise add-ons? Get a 14 days free trial token to test the Enterprise add-ons (all plans).

Credits

A very special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn, and ZenDiS for sponsoring released and upcoming features. Your support, alongside the efforts of our amazing Community, helps drive these innovations.

Also a big thanks to our Community members for reporting bugs and helping us identify and provide fixes. Special thanks for reporting and finding bugs go to Christoph Jansen, Chris Kerrison, Laurent Redor, Gernot Hollinger, Thomas Knäuper, Gábor Alexovics, and Rince wind.

Last but not least, we are very grateful for our very engaged translation contributors on Crowdin, who translated quite a few OpenProject strings! This release we would like to particularly thank the following users:

Narek Selvinazyan, for translations into Armenian,
Amir Zalaghi for translations into Persian.

Would you like to help out with translations yourself? Then take a look at our translation guide and find out exactly how you can contribute. It is very much appreciated!

Why OpenProject is better than Jira

2026-08-27T09:18:00+00:00

You know it’s the right decision, but having to leave Jira may not feel like good news at first. Just like switching jobs, you will learn a lot in the process, and get the chance not just to recreate what you had in a different environment, but to improve it.

OpenProject is better than Jira, in many ways. There, we said it, and we know that’s a bold statement. For many organizations, fundamental differences around data sovereignty, open source and self-hosting may already make it the better choice. And in other areas, we deliberately do things differently – and, yes, often better.

Why you may have to switch from Jira

Maybe Jira worked perfectly well for your organization. Your teams know how to use it, your processes have grown around it, and you have invested time in configuring it to fit the way you work. And yet, you may find yourself looking for a Jira alternative. At first, maybe not because you want to, but because you have to.

One obvious reason is hosting: Atlassian has announced the end of life of its Data Center products for March 28, 2029. If your organization needs to run its project management software on its own infrastructure, moving to Jira Cloud may simply not be an option.

There may be other reasons, too: data sovereignty requirements, an open source strategy or less dependency on a single software vendor.

Tip
And yes, price matters too. Cost may be another reason to reconsider your current setup. You can check our OpenProject pricing to see what this would mean for your organization. But when choosing project management software, price is only one part of the decision.

Having good reasons to leave doesn’t necessarily make switching easier, though. Just like when changing jobs, you may have good reasons to leave and still feel reluctant to give up a familiar environment. After all, getting used to something new takes time.

The same is true for a software migration. There will be data to migrate, processes that work differently and people who need time to adjust. To make the first part easier, the OpenProject Jira Migrator guides you through importing your Jira data into OpenProject.

So, if you’re making that effort anyway, it’s worth thinking about what you want to get out of it. If you’re looking for a more detailed side-by-side overview, see our OpenProject vs. Jira comparison.

OpenProject isn’t Jira – and that’s the point

When changing jobs, would you really look for an exact copy of your old one? – Probably not. There will be things you want to keep, but also things you hope will be better. The same is worth considering when replacing Jira.

A migration from Jira to OpenProject is not always a one-to-one process. Some concepts translate quite naturally, while others may require a different setup or approach.

We don’t develop OpenProject to rebuild Jira feature by feature. We look at what organizations need to manage their projects, try to understand where existing solutions fall short and, where we can, find a better way to address these needs.

So, don’t just ask what you need to replace. Ask what you want to improve. That’s where the reasons why you have to leave Jira start to become reasons why you may want to choose OpenProject.

Why you may want to switch to OpenProject

So far, we’ve mostly talked about reasons that may push you away from Jira. Now let’s look at the other side: What might pull you towards OpenProject?

Stay in control with open source and self-hosting

If self-hosting is the reason you started looking for a Jira alternative, OpenProject can give you more than a temporary answer to a hosting problem.

OpenProject is open source under the GNU GPLv3 license. You can inspect the source code, modify it and run OpenProject on your own infrastructure. With the Enterprise on-premises edition, organizations also get professional support while keeping their OpenProject environment on their own infrastructure.

This gives you control not only over where your data is stored, but also over the software you rely on. You are less dependent on a single vendor’s hosting strategy and can make decisions based on your own requirements.

Questions around control over your data are becoming even more relevant with AI. Atlassian’s new AI data contribution policy took effect on August 17, 2026, raising new questions for organizations about how much control they have over their data and the direction their software vendor is taking.

For organizations with strict requirements around data sovereignty, this may be what brought you to OpenProject in the first place. With OpenProject, you have the choice to self-host and retain direct control over your data and infrastructure.

Manage more than individual issues and tasks

Managing a product or project is about more than tracking individual issues and tasks. Product teams work with user stories, epics, bugs, sprints and releases, and need to understand how this work connects to larger initiatives. At the same time, organizations need to see dependencies, timelines and risks beyond an individual team’s backlog.

OpenProject is built around this broader view. Work packages can represent different types of work and be structured in flexible hierarchies, while Gantt charts, milestones and dependencies add planning perspectives around the same data. Project phases and phase gates can be used where organizations need consistent lifecycles and governance across initiatives.

Project and product management doesn’t stop at the project boundary: OpenProject lets you structure projects in hierarchies and bring them together in portfolios and programs. Work packages can reference and depend on work packages in other projects, making it possible to plan and collaborate across project boundaries.

A product team may work with user stories, backlogs, sprints and boards, while product or program leads need to understand dependencies across teams and initiatives. Management may need a portfolio-level view. These perspectives can remain connected in the same environment.

Combine classical, agile and hybrid project management

OpenProject supports classical, agile and hybrid project management in one platform. Teams can work with agile boards and backlogs while project managers use Gantt charts, dependencies, project phases and other planning tools around the same project data.

Tip
We use OpenProject to build OpenProject, too. Our Development teams work agile, together with Product and QA, and use OpenProject to plan and manage much of our own product development. Features, bugs, user stories, epics and other work are managed as work packages, while Backlogs, Boards, Roadmaps and other views help teams plan their work at different levels. Most of this product development is publicly visible in our OpenProject Community as part of our open source approach.

Here’s one example of how OpenProject is designed around the way teams actually work: In OpenProject Backlogs, you can organize your product backlog in buckets and view a sprint and the product backlog next to each other, making it easier to move work between them while keeping both in view.

This also extends to larger agile and product organizations. OpenProject can be configured for frameworks such as SAFe, connecting different levels of agile planning with tools such as Backlogs, Boards and Gantt charts.

The point is not to decide whether classical or agile project management is better. It’s to let teams use the approach that fits their work while still keeping an overview across the organization.

Keep more of your project management connected

Project management involves more than planning work. Teams discuss decisions in meetings, document knowledge, track time and costs, and need to understand whether the right people are available to do the work. In OpenProject, many of these activities are part of the same platform and remain connected to the project itself.

Meeting management

Take meetings as an example. You can prepare an agenda, document outcomes and decisions, link work packages to agenda items and create follow-up work directly from a meeting. The meeting does not become a separate place where decisions are documented and then disconnected from the actual work.

Knowledge management

The same idea extends to project documentation. OpenProject includes both an integrated Wiki and Documents, so teams can create and maintain project knowledge alongside their work. In Jira, comparable documentation capabilities are provided through Confluence, which can be connected to Jira through its Docs feature.

Resource management and team planning

Resource management is another example: OpenProject connects resource planning with project data, people, skills, working hours and availability. This helps organizations understand not only what work is planned, but also whether the right capacity is available to deliver it.

Jira teams looking for comparable capacity and resource planning capabilities may use Marketplace apps such as BigPicture or Tempo Capacity Planner. In OpenProject, resource management is integrated into the project management platform.

Time, costs and budgets

Project controlling can stay connected to project execution, too. OpenProject includes time tracking, labor and unit costs, project budgets, and time and cost reporting. Time and costs can be associated directly with work packages and projects, keeping planning, execution and controlling within the same project management environment.

Features you may not know you’re missing: Baseline comparison and more

We’ve looked at fairly fundamental differences. But sometimes it’s a much smaller feature that makes you wonder how you worked without it before. During a Jira migration, you’ll probably ask more than once: Can OpenProject do this like Jira? Sometimes, we’d like to turn that question around: Can Jira do this like OpenProject?

Here are some features that might surprise Jira users:

Flexible work package tables can be configured, filtered, grouped and displayed as hierarchies, giving you different views of the same project data.
Baseline comparison lets you compare the current state of your work packages with an earlier point in time and immediately see what has changed.
Different board types let you organize work by status, assignee, version, subproject, parent-child relationships or freely defined columns.
Hierarchical custom fields let you structure selectable values across multiple levels instead of limiting them to a flat list.

Tip
These are just a few examples, and there are many more worth looking at. A proper feature comparison deserves more detail than we can fit into this article, so we’re preparing a separate one. We’ll put the features on the table and look at what Jira users can continue to do with OpenProject, where OpenProject takes things further and which features might surprise you. Stay tuned!

Baseline comparison is especially worth showing in action: A project plan rarely stays exactly as it was initially planned. Dates move, durations change and work gets rescheduled. With Baseline comparison, changes become immediately visible compared with an earlier point in time. Watch a short introduction of OpenProject’s Baseline comparison on YouTube.

So, is OpenProject better than Jira?

Let’s come back to the main question. Is OpenProject better than Jira at absolutely everything? No. Jira has capabilities that OpenProject doesn’t offer, and its Marketplace provides a large ecosystem of specialized apps. Depending on your requirements, some of these may be important to you.

“Better” doesn’t have to mean having a longer feature list. For organizations that value open source software, self-hosting and data sovereignty, integrated project management, or the ability to combine different ways of working in one platform, OpenProject takes an approach that may simply be the better fit. And if you have to reconsider Jira anyway, this is a good opportunity to find out.

Choosing a different tool also means accepting some differences. Some Jira concepts will map quite naturally to OpenProject, others won’t. Some workflows may need to change instead of being recreated exactly as they were before. And some features will surprise you in a good way.

Changing jobs rarely feels comfortable while you’re doing it, even if you know it’s the right decision. But looking back a year or two later, the effort it took may feel much less important than what you gained from the move. The same can be true for changing the software you work with every day.

At a glance: Where OpenProject is better than Jira

Benefit	OpenProject approach	Why it matters when switching from Jira
Control and independence	Open source, long-term on-premises hosting and data sovereignty	Keep control over your software, infrastructure and data without depending on a cloud-only strategy.
Integrated project management in one platform	Planning, execution, collaboration, resources and controlling are closely connected	Keep more of your project management in one place, with less need to integrate and manage additional apps.
Flexibility in how teams work	Classical, agile and hybrid ways of working with the same project data	Let teams use the approach that fits their work without losing the overall view.
Visibility and governance across projects	Project hierarchies, portfolios, programs, cross-project dependencies and project lifecycles	Understand dependencies, standardize how projects are managed and keep an overview of larger initiatives.

Tip
Of course, these four points are not the whole story. There are many more reasons why OpenProject may be the better fit for your organization, including individual features that we’ll take a closer look at in our next article. But as you compare the two platforms, keep in mind that “better” is about more than a feature checklist. It is also about how you want to work, how much control you want to keep, and what you expect from the software you rely on.

You may have started looking for a Jira alternative because you have to switch. We hope we’ve given you a few good reasons why you may actually want to choose OpenProject. Please reach out if you have any questions.

News from the Product Desk: The future of agile reporting in OpenProject

2026-08-24T08:00:00+00:00

High-performing agile teams do not just deliver work, they reflect on it. That habit of stopping after every sprint to ask what went well, what did not, and what should we change is the heartbeat of continuous improvement, or kaizen: small, steady adjustments that compound sprint after sprint. But a good retrospective needs good evidence, not just gut feeling. As we continue investing in agile ways of working, we want to give you a look at where we are headed with agile reporting: the sprint reports, charts, dashboards, and insights that give teams the evidence their retrospectives need to actually drive that improvement.

Quick navigation:

Co-creation with our community

Over the past months, we have talked to teams running Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe at scale, and we dug into where reporting falls short, especially for teams coming from tools like Jira, where reports often feel scattered across plugins. Those conversations shaped the direction below. As always, this is a preview of concepts and early prototypes, not a finished feature set, and we are sharing it early because we want your feedback to further improve it.

Making retrospectives less painful

The goal of the new reporting concept is simple: make it effortless to see how a sprint actually went, without exporting data into a spreadsheet or stitching together three different plugins. Reports should answer the questions every retrospective starts with: did we finish what we planned, where did work pile up, how did the sprint scope change, are we getting faster or slower, without anyone having to build that picture by hand.

Sprint reports

At the center of the new concept sits the sprint report: a single view summarizing what was planned, what was completed, what was added mid-sprint, and what got carried over. Instead of digging through a board’s history, a team can open one page after the sprint ends and immediately see the shape of what happened, a natural starting point for any retrospective. All that of course including the visual charts you need to quickly recognize the areas which went well or which might need some attention. Of course you will also have the possibility to check out the reports during the sprint in order to recognize problems early.

Sprint goal and work package overview

Your sprint report will open with a sprint goal, so that the focus area is clear to everyone. You will also get an overview over sprint health, showing the overall sprint progress and scope changes.

Burndown chart

The classic burndown chart is getting a refresh. It will track remaining work, in story points, hours, or number of work packages, against the sprint timeline, so teams can see at a glance whether they are on pace, ahead, or falling behind. We are also looking at making the ideal progress guideline easier to compare against actual progress, so deviations, both scope increase and decrease, are obvious.

Burnup chart

For teams whose scope shifts mid-sprint, which, let’s be honest, is most teams, we are planning to introduce burnup charts alongside burndown. Rather than only showing what’s left, a burnup chart plots completed work and total scope over time, making scope creep visible instead of something you only notice in hindsight.

Velocity chart

To help teams plan future sprints with more confidence, velocity charts will show completed story points, work packages, or spent time across recent sprints. This isn’t about chasing a bigger number every time. It’s about giving teams a realistic, data-backed sense of their own throughput so sprint planning stops being a guessing game and you can have a reliable foundation to plan a healthy sprint scope.

Epic progress chart

For teams tracking work at a higher level than individual sprints, we are planning an epic progress chart, a view that shows how many work packages or story points have been completed or are still open within an epic. Rather than clicking into an epic to manually tally status, a team or stakeholder can see progress across one epic, or several epics side by side, at a glance. This is especially useful for teams working across multiple sprints or product increments, where an epic can span weeks or months and no single sprint report tells the whole story.

Created vs. resolved chart

For teams juggling a steady stream of incoming work, support tickets, bugs, unplanned requests, we are planning a created vs. resolved chart. Plotting new work against resolved work over time makes it easy to spot whether a backlog is shrinking, holding steady, or quietly growing out of control.

Cumulative flow diagrams

For teams working in Kanban or a Scrumban flow, the cumulative flow diagram will visualize how work packages move through each status over time. Widening bands point straight to bottlenecks. If “in progress” keeps ballooning, that’s exactly where a team should be looking.

Sprint scope changes

With the integrated work package tables you can quickly get an overview over all work packages which were completed within a sprint and which not. Also the scope increase and decrease will be listed in detail.

Cycle time and lead time

We are also planning to include cycle time and lead time to the reporting possibilities, two related but distinct measures of speed.

Cycle time tracks how long a work package takes once someone actually starts on it, showing how fast the team moves once work is picked up.

Lead time tracks the full journey, from the moment a request first enters the backlog to the moment it’s done, reflecting how long the requester has actually been waiting.

The gap between the two tells its own story: a large difference usually points to a queuing or prioritization problem rather than a speed problem, since most of the delay happens before anyone even starts the work. Teams will be able to configure which statuses mark the start and end of each measurement, then see both metrics together so retrospectives can address the right problem instead of guessing at it.

Reports across sprints and portfolios

For organizations running multiple teams, particularly under SAFe, we are exploring reports that roll up across sprints, projects, or an entire portfolio. Rather than checking six team boards individually, a program lead could see a single combined epic progress or cumulative flow view spanning every team in a Product Increment.

Individualization

For the first release of agile reporting we are planning to offer a static sprint report page. In further iterations we will give you a possibility to adjust the default sprint reports, so that you can choose only the charts which are relevant to your team. We are also planning to extend the project dashboards, offering the agile charts as configurable dashboard widgets.

Direction we’re exploring for agile reports

These concepts are our vision for agile reporting within OpenProject. Thank you to everyone who took part in user interviews and contributed to this vision. We’d love hearing your feedback on the prototypes we are publishing here, so that we can further improve the reporting capabilities based on your needs.

These prototypes represent where we want reporting in OpenProject to go, closer to how retrospectives actually work, and useful to teams practicing Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe. We are planning to release the first iteration of agile reports pretty soon, so stay tuned.

Atlassian's AI data policy takes effect on August 17: Discover OpenProject as a Jira Cloud alternative

2026-08-14T08:00:00+00:00

On Monday, August 17, Atlassian’s new AI data contribution policy takes effect. For many organizations, the deadline is not really about AI. It is about control. As software vendors increasingly rely on customer data to improve AI-powered products, organizations have to decide whether they are comfortable with that direction, or whether it is time to explore alternatives that offer more transparency and deployment flexibility.

Quick navigation:

What is Atlassian’s new AI data policy?

Starting August 17, Atlassian will begin using eligible customer metadata and, depending on each organization’s plan and Data Contribution settings, in-app data to improve its AI-powered products and experiences, including Rovo.

Important
While administrators can control some of these settings, most Atlassian Cloud customers, including those on Premium plans, cannot fully opt out of contributing eligible data.

Using customer data to train AI can be a serious concern, especially when organizations cannot fully opt out. Organizations need to know how their data is used, and they need a real choice about whether it is used at all. If your organization is looking for more transparency, deployment flexibility, or control over its project management platform, now is a good time to evaluate OpenProject as a Jira Cloud alternative.

A changing landscape for Atlassian Cloud customers

Atlassian’s latest announcement reflects a broader trend in enterprise software. As AI becomes a core part of modern collaboration platforms, software vendors are increasingly using customer data to improve AI-powered products and services.

For organizations with strict governance, compliance, or data sovereignty requirements, this raises a few strategic questions:

Does our current platform still align with our security and governance requirements?
Are we comfortable with the direction our software vendor is taking?
How much control do we have over our deployment and our data?
If our requirements change in the future, do we have the flexibility to adapt?

Whether you ultimately stay with Jira Cloud or not, this is a good opportunity to check whether your project management platform still meets your organization’s long term needs.

OpenProject: a Jira Cloud alternative built for control

OpenProject is a leading open source project management software and a strong Jira Cloud alternative for teams that value transparency, flexibility, and control.

Unlike SaaS-only solutions, OpenProject lets organizations choose the deployment model that best fits their requirements:

OpenProject Cloud: a fully managed SaaS solution hosted in the EU.
OpenProject Enterprise on-premises: ideal for organizations that require full control over their infrastructure and data.
Community Edition: the free of charge Community version for small organizations.

Whether your priority is data sovereignty, compliance, deployment flexibility, or avoiding vendor lock-in, OpenProject gives you the freedom to choose the setup that fits your organization.

OpenProject includes everything teams need to manage projects effectively, including agile boards, work packages, Gantt charts, roadmaps, portfolio management, and time and cost tracking.

Image: OpenProject’s backlog and sprints view for agile teams.

Start your free OpenProject Cloud trial

Compare OpenProject with Jira

If you are evaluating alternatives, these resources are a good place to start:

Considering a move from Atlassian Cloud?

At OpenProject, we are very aware of the challenges many Jira customers are facing. Making the switch to OpenProject easier has therefore become an important focus across our company. A key part of this effort is our dedicated Jira Migrator, designed to help organizations move their projects and data from Jira to OpenProject.

Note
Today, our Jira Migrator primarily supports Jira Data Center. We are also seeing growing interest from organizations that want to migrate directly from Atlassian Cloud to OpenProject.

If you are considering that path, we would like to hear from you. Your feedback helps us prioritize the future development of our migration tooling. By understanding your migration scenarios, challenges, and requirements, we can build the capabilities that matter most to organizations moving from Atlassian Cloud to OpenProject.

Whether you are evaluating alternatives or already planning a migration, get in touch with our team. We would be happy to discuss your requirements and learn more about your migration plans.

Make your next platform decision with confidence

The August 17 deadline is more than a product update. It is an opportunity to check whether your project management platform still gives your organization the level of transparency, flexibility, and control it needs.

If you are rethinking your long term Jira strategy, now is a good time to explore OpenProject as a Jira Cloud alternative.

Have questions about migrating from Atlassian Cloud? Contact our team.

OpenProject 17.7: Resource management and better team organization

2026-08-05T09:12:00+00:00

We are excited to announce the release of OpenProject 17.7. This version introduces the new Resource management module (Enterprise add-on), enabling organizations to plan resources, allocate work, and manage capacity directly in OpenProject. Combined with new organizational capabilities available on all OpenProject plans, these features help organizations make better planning decisions based on people’s availability, skills, and working hours.

OpenProject 17.7 also brings improvements for agile planning with Backlogs and Sprints, expands support for PM² and PMflex, and includes many usability improvements across the platform.

In this article, we highlight the most important changes and what they mean for your daily work. And, as always, please see our Release notes that contain all changes, features and bug fixes.

A quick article navigation:

Resource management comes to OpenProject (Enterprise add-on)

One of the biggest highlights of OpenProject 17.7 is the new Resource management module, available as an Enterprise add-on from the Premium plan onwards. It enables organizations to plan work based on actual capacity, allocate resources across projects, and match staffing needs with available team members.

Unlike solutions that rely on separate applications or Marketplace extensions for resource planning, OpenProject brings project management and resource management together in one integrated platform. This allows organizations to plan projects, allocate resources, and make staffing decisions without switching between tools or synchronizing data.

The new module builds on the organizational capabilities introduced with this release, including Departments, work-related user attributes, and working hours. These capabilities are available on all OpenProject plans and provide the foundation for realistic resource planning. We will take a closer look at them later in this article.

Tip
Want to learn more? Read our dedicated article on resource management, where we explore the new module in detail, including the Resource planner, staffing workflows, and practical examples. For detailed documentation on the Resource Management module, please see our user guide.

Plan resources across projects

The new Resource planner provides dedicated planning views for project managers and resource managers. Project managers and resource managers can visualize resource allocations, identify available capacity, and allocate work directly from the planning timeline.

Allocate work and manage staffing

OpenProject 17.7 also introduces Staffing, making it easier to match open resource requests with suitable project members. Instead of assigning work immediately, project managers can define staffing requirements and allocate the right people based on availability, roles, skills, departments, and other work-related user attributes.

This creates a structured staffing process while giving resource managers full visibility into current allocations, utilization, and upcoming capacity demands.

Better organizational management

The new Resource management module is powered by several new organizational capabilities that are available on all OpenProject plans. These improvements help organizations better represent their teams, working schedules, and organizational structures directly within OpenProject. See our user guide for detailed information on user’s work schedule and availability.

Organize users with Departments

Organizations can now create Departments and assign users to them. Departments provide a consistent organizational structure across OpenProject and make it easier to organize teams, assign responsibilities, and support resource planning.

For organizations using LDAP, departments can also be synchronized automatically with their directory service.

OpenProject 17.7 introduces configurable work-related user attributes, allowing administrators to define information such as job titles, skills, roles, certifications, cost centers, or other organization-specific data.

These attributes provide additional context about team members and can be used to support staffing and resource planning decisions.

Define work schedules

Organizations can now configure a work schedule for each user, including future schedule changes and an availability factor to reflect the time actually available for project work.

This makes planning significantly more realistic by taking part-time schedules, changing work hours or work days, as well as recurring non-project activities into account.

Improved Backlogs and Sprints

OpenProject 17.7 brings significant improvements for agile teams, from support for multiple active sprints to a smoother and more efficient backlog management experience.

OpenProject 17.7 removes one of the biggest limitations when scaling Scrum teams. Projects can now have multiple active sprints at the same time without the need to share sprints across several projects.

This makes it much easier to organize larger Scrum environments within a single project. Multiple teams can work in parallel, each managing their own sprint while maintaining a shared product backlog. It also supports organizations that structure work around functional sub-teams, such as development, design, and quality assurance.

Project structures become simpler, sprint planning becomes easier to manage, and teams can scale agile workflows without introducing unnecessary project hierarchies.

Add new or existing work packages to a sprint, backlog bucket or backlog inbox

Teams can now add existing work packages – or create new ones – directly within a sprint, backlog bucket, or the sprint inbox, eliminating unnecessary navigation and helping teams capture work exactly where it belongs.

Multi-select for sprint and backlog filters

Backlog and Sprint views now support selecting multiple sprints and backlog buckets to show. This makes it easier to focus on the work that matters most by displaying only the relevant sprints and backlog buckets.

Improved drag and drop

Drag-and-drop interactions have been refined across Backlogs and Sprints, providing smoother behavior on both desktop and mobile devices for an overall better planning experience.

Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.7

Beyond resource management and agile planning, OpenProject 17.7 introduces several additional enhancements that improve project management, collaboration, and reporting. We’ll give a short overview in this article. For the complete list of features, enhancements, and bug fixes, please always refer to the Release notes.

Project attributes for work package types

Organizations can now configure supported work package types to display project attributes. While project attributes can be used for different methodologies and project frameworks, the enhancement was specifically developed to support PM² and PMflex. Once configured, a dedicated Project attributes tab appears in the work package, providing quick access to methodology-specific information.

OpenProject 17.7 also introduces a new Project timeline widget that visualizes project phases and gates directly on the project overview page, making it easier to monitor project progress at a glance. This widget complements the new support for project attributes in work package types. It is particularly valuable for organizations using PM² and PMflex, where project phases and gates are an integral part of the methodology.

PMflex Artefact PDF export

Work packages can now be exported using a dedicated PMflex Artefact PDF template. The export combines project attributes, work package attributes, custom fields, and related work packages into a structured document suitable for project documentation and governance.

Administrators can configure PMflex artefacts to be generated automatically when a work package reaches a defined status. Generated artefacts can either be uploaded to the project’s connected Nextcloud folder or added directly as work package attachments.

Improved document collaboration

Working with the Documents module becomes even more convenient in OpenProject 17.7: Pasting a work package URL into a document now automatically creates a rendered work package link instead of displaying the plain URL. Tiny links also provide a hover preview, making linked work packages easier to identify without leaving the current document. These improvements make navigating between project documentation and work packages faster and more intuitive.

Wiki improvements

OpenProject 17.7 also brings several improvements to the wiki experience. Project administrators can now create an internal wiki directly from the project settings. In addition, adding related wiki pages is more intuitive, and the search dialog now displays page hierarchies to provide better context. For users of the XWiki integration, an “As Parent” badge makes project management relations easier to identify.

Semantic identifiers leave Beta

Semantic identifiers are now generally available. They allow organizations to define meaningful, human-readable work package identifiers based on configurable patterns, making projects easier to navigate and reference.

More powerful calculated fields (Enterprise add-on)

Calculated custom fields now support comparison, logical, and numeric operators, making it possible to create much more advanced formulas. Organizations can use functions such as IF, SUM, MAX, and CASE to calculate values dynamically and automate reporting directly within OpenProject.

OpenProject 17.7: Migration, installation, updates and support

Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 17.7. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, August 5, 2026.

You will find more information about all new features and changes in our Release notes and in the OpenProject Documentation.

If you need support, you can post your questions in the Community Forum, or if you are eligible for Enterprise support, please contact us and we will be happy to support you personally.

New to OpenProject? To test all features of OpenProject 17.7 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
Prefer to run OpenProject 17.7 in your own infrastructure? Here you can find the Installation guidelines for OpenProject.
Want to upgrade from a Community version to try out the Enterprise add-ons? Get a 14 days free trial token to test the Enterprise add-ons (all plans).

Credits

A very special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn, ZenDiS, and STEF for sponsoring released or upcoming features. Your support, alongside the efforts of our amazing Community, helps drive these innovations.

Also a big thanks to our Community members for reporting bugs and helping us identify and provide fixes. Special thanks for reporting and finding bugs go to Walid Ibrahim, Daniel Paulo Dos Santos, Christophe GESCHÉ, Gábor Alexovics, David Masshardt, and Katja Zedel.

erdei.p, for translations into Hungarian,
Adam Siemienski for translations to Polish,
Yuliia Pavliuk for translations to Ukrainian.

Would you like to help out with translations yourself? Then take a look at our translation guide and find out exactly how you can contribute. It is very much appreciated!

OpenProject Roadmap 2026: The strategic topics shaping our development

2026-07-23T08:07:00+00:00

At OpenProject, transparency isn’t just a principle, it shapes how we work. Just like our source code, our strategic roadmap is public. It shows what we’ve recently released, what we’re currently building, and what we’re planning next, though plans may evolve along the way.

We know that enterprise project management is undergoing one of its biggest transformation in years. Organizations are moving away from proprietary software towards sovereign, open source platforms to keep control over their infrastructure and data. We at OpenProject are committed to building open source project management software that fits all your organizational needs and provides your teams with the ideal environment to work in. For us, digital sovereignty is not an add-on or an afterthought - it is a fundamental necessity.

Our roadmap is shaped in close collaboration with our customers, users and Community. Through continuous interviews, feedback sessions, and prototype testing, we gather insights from real-world use cases, from agile teams to organizations migrating from tools like Jira. We validate ideas early, share product vision openly, and refine our direction together with those who use OpenProject every day. This co-creation approach ensures that our roadmap reflects actual needs, not assumptions. It guides our focus on becoming a comprehensive, sovereign alternative to Jira, while also investing in areas like AI-powered workflows, collaboration, and enterprise-ready project management.

This article will guide you through the strategic topics that define our focus on specific features and functionalities in 2026.

Note
This blog post provides only an overview of the topics and does not cover all the latest features. For that, please refer to the latest release notes.

Quick navigation:

Jira Migrator and Jira fundamentals

With Jira Data Center reaching its end of life, many organizations are looking for a self-hosted, European alternative. But they are looking not just for another issue tracker. Organizations migrating from Jira to OpenProject are making the strategic decision to move to a sovereign work management platform that brings together product and project management, collaboration, resource management, AI, and much more. All in one single system, open source and scalable.

This topic plays a significant role in shaping our roadmap. We aim to facilitate a seamless and reliable transition, allowing teams to concentrate on their projects rather than the migration. Additionally, we intend to bridge feature gaps, strengthening OpenProject’s core capabilities and providing teams with everything they expect to find once they arrive. Let’s highlight two important achievements in this area that have already been published this year.

With version 17.4 we released the OpenProject Jira Migrator in Beta: a built-in, guided wizard that imports projects, issues, comments, attachments, basic custom fields, and more from Jira Data Center directly into OpenProject. The Jira Migrator thus fills a gap for organizations that want to move away from Jira but face major challenges with the migration, such as time constraints or technical complexity. It allows teams to migrate their data reliably and securely and, by importing all issue histories and contexts, to continue working as usual right away in the new OpenProject environment. For more detailed information about the OpenProject Jira Migrator, please see our documentation.

We are working continuously not only to improve the OpenProject Jira Migrator with every release, but also to close remaining feature gaps for a smooth transition from Jira to OpenProject. With version 17.5 we released Project-based (semantic) work package identifiers in order to facilitate Jira migration and to provide more context while referencing or searching for work packages.

OpenProject is evolving more and more from a usual project management application into a sovereign work management platform that combines project and product management, different project management approaches, collaboration, resource management, AI, governance, and more. With integrations for GitHub or Nextcloud, the OpenProject ecosystem becomes connected to other open source tools without switching tools. And with the XWiki integration, OpenProject can provide a fully functional alternative to Jira, including replacing Confluence for knowledge management with an open source solution.

If you’re already considering switching to OpenProject, we also recommend our newest blog article “From Jira to OpenProject: choosing the right migration strategy for your organization” from our CPO Rosanna Sibora.

Agile & Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

We want teams to scale agile collaboration beyond a single team: with improved sprint planning, automated sprint boards, flexible Kanban boards, and support for Agile Release Trains (ARTs) that coordinate multiple teams working toward shared objectives. Just as important is transparency, which means visibility into progress, dependencies, and delivery performance. But also the ability to combine SAFe practices with classic project management methods.

A lot of this has already reached the product: we introduced backlogs and sprints with a new UI, implemented sprint goals and a sprint overview, backlog buckets, sprint sharing and much more. If you want to know what’s coming next, you can track our planned features here on our Community instance. For those interested in agile updates, see this article written by our CPO Rosanna Sibora: The future of agile work in OpenProject.

IT Service Management (ITSM)

With ITSM, we are opening up a new area: tracking and following up incidents and service requests across teams, with clear workflows and full traceability. All while maintaining the high standard of data sovereignty you expect from OpenProject: your service data stays in your own environment, whether self-hosted or in our EU cloud.

We want to enable teams to track and manage IT services efficiently with OpenProject:

Incident and request tracking – Capture, assign, and resolve issues across teams.
Create and maintain an inventory for your organization.
Change and Release Management – Control changes and deployments with structured workflows.
Service transparency – Ensure accountability and visibility across the full service lifecycle.
Mailboxes & incoming emails – Automatically create and update tickets from shared inboxes.

See more details on the current development process regarding ITSM.

Test Management

Software quality should not require a separate tool. We are working toward test management directly within OpenProject with an integration to the open source test management system SquashTM. Working closely together, we want to integrate our systems to create a seamless ecosystem of open source software.

Setting up data synchronization should allow work packages from OpenProject to be displayed as requirements in SquashTM while keeping them up to date in OpenProject. Additionally, test cases, executions, and results should be visible in a structured manner in OpenProject. This will allow users to link tests directly to requirements or defects, organizing them in a clear and structured way in one place while ensuring complete coverage. It should also be possible to create bugs as work packages in OpenProject from within SquashTM. Then, they are linked back to the failing test case and its related requirements.

More details on the current development process regarding test management.

Resources & Capacity Management

Good project management relies on fair and well-considered capacity management, and the success of projects is often determined by a realistic distribution of tasks tailored to individual needs.

As resource management is so central for project management, OpenProject introduces resource management with version 17.7 to help teams plan ahead, even as projects grow. This includes new possibilities to reflect an organizational structure and organize users by departments. It is also possible to track user attributes and define their working hours including future schedule changes, and time off. This helps identify bottlenecks early and makes it possible to adjust assignments dynamically while preventing overload.

We are also introducing a dedicated Resource management module (Enterprise add-on). In this module, you can add Resource planners to plan and allocate work in different views that brings together timelines, work packages, and availability all in one place directly within OpenProject. New features also include the ability to allocate tasks only on specific skills and roles, as well as staffing, which matches open resource requests with suitable project members. A detailed overview of the planned features, including screenshots from the application and hands-on examples, can be found in our new blog post about integrated resource management in OpenProject.

These features offer teams the full functionality needed to plan and allocate workloads and project timelines directly where the work actually happens. With its high level of customization in organizational structure and user attributes, OpenProject can provide the right environment for all sizes of organizations, even those with many projects and numerous employees with individual schedules. These features also lay the foundation for cross-project resource planning.

More details on the current development process regarding Resources & Capacity Management.

AI use cases

AI is only useful in project management if you can trust where your data goes. That is why our approach starts with sovereignty: all processing takes place within your own secure OpenProject environment with no external data sharing, whether self-hosted or in our EU cloud. On that basis, we are integrating AI to automate routine tasks, generate insights, and support project planning and decision-making. The topic consists of three building blocks:

MCP Server: the AI integration layer

The MCP Server, released with OpenProject 17.2, can act as a central gateway between OpenProject and AI: it can connect multiple AI models and tools through one standardized interface, to enable AI-supported workflows from task creation to project insights. And it can be extended with custom or third-party AI services tailored to your organization. All AI interactions stay under your control, and every AI capability we build next rests on this layer.

AI text assistance

Much of project work is writing: descriptions, comments, documentation. AI text assistance will let you rewrite, correct, or refine selected text directly where you work without switching tools. It improves readability, tone, and consistency across your project communication, and translates or adapts content instantly for international teams.

Semantic search

Finding information should not depend on remembering the right keyword. Semantic search will let you search by meaning and intent instead, retrieving results from work packages, documents, and project data in one place so your team spends less time searching and more time deciding and delivering. The models evolve with your project data and usage patterns, and they run entirely within your own OpenProject environment.

More details on the current development process regarding AI use cases.

Portfolio and Program Management

Portfolio management means more than keeping a list of projects: it means prioritizing initiatives, tracking progress, risks, and budgets, and keeping everything aligned with your strategic goals. To support this, we are implementing PM² and PMflex best practices for transparent portfolio governance in OpenProject.

It starts with the intake: new initiatives are collected through a structured process using templates, then assessed objectively based on strategic contribution, benefits, risks, and resource impact - supported by structured artifacts such as a complexity assessment or a business case. Once projects are running, the focus shifts to the portfolio as a whole: tracking progress, benefits, and interdependencies, with governance boards and standardized, AI-supported reports that make decisions transparent.

More details on the current development process regarding Portfolio and Program Management.

Document workflows and real-time collaboration

Text-based content deserves the same structure as the rest of your project work. With this topic, we are enabling real-time collaboration and structured document workflows in OpenProject.

The basis is our BlockNote integration: a modern text editor that lets your team create, edit, and collaborate on texts in real time, directly within OpenProject. Around it, we are building the collaboration layer you expect from a modern writing tool including inline comments, replies in context, and feedback that gets resolved collaboratively, as well as diffing and track changes to compare versions, highlight edits, and maintain a full revision history. The final step turns collaborative writing into a managed process: request documents, define approval steps and review cycles, and keep your documentation as traceable as your work packages.

More details on the current development process regarding Document workflows and real-time collaboration.

Your feedback, ideas, and wishes for our roadmap

Your opinion matters: Are these planned features useful to you? Is anything missing that you really wish for? We would love to hear from you. Feel free to contact us.

To stay up to date, you can subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn, Fosstodon, Reddit or other social media channels. You can also contribute actively to our Community.

OpenProject Blog

OpenProject 17.8: Create and update with AI in OpenProject (Enterprise add-on)

AI-assisted actions with the MCP Server (Enterprise add-on)

Create and update work packages with AI assistance

Add comments and manage work package relations

Work package relations in tables now available in the Community edition

Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.8

Multiple target versions for work packages

Agile improvements for bulk editing and dragging Backlogs cards to external applications

Milestones and sprints in the project timeline

Global limits and restrictions for time entries (Enterprise add-on)

Wiki macros available in more text editors

Improved work package identifiers and search

Meeting activity visible directly in work packages

OpenProject 17.8: Migration, installation, updates and support

Credits

Why OpenProject is better than Jira

Why you may have to switch from Jira

OpenProject isn’t Jira – and that’s the point

Why you may want to switch to OpenProject

Stay in control with open source and self-hosting

Manage more than individual issues and tasks

Combine classical, agile and hybrid project management

Keep more of your project management connected

Meeting management

Knowledge management

Resource management and team planning

Time, costs and budgets

Features you may not know you’re missing: Baseline comparison and more

So, is OpenProject better than Jira?

At a glance: Where OpenProject is better than Jira

News from the Product Desk: The future of agile reporting in OpenProject

Co-creation with our community

Making retrospectives less painful

Sprint reports

Sprint goal and work package overview

Burndown chart

Burnup chart

Velocity chart

Epic progress chart

Created vs. resolved chart

Cumulative flow diagrams

Sprint scope changes

Cycle time and lead time

Reports across sprints and portfolios

Individualization

Direction we’re exploring for agile reports

Atlassian's AI data policy takes effect on August 17: Discover OpenProject as a Jira Cloud alternative

What is Atlassian’s new AI data policy?

A changing landscape for Atlassian Cloud customers

OpenProject: a Jira Cloud alternative built for control

Compare OpenProject with Jira

Considering a move from Atlassian Cloud?

Make your next platform decision with confidence

OpenProject 17.7: Resource management and better team organization

Resource management comes to OpenProject (Enterprise add-on)

Plan resources across projects

Allocate work and manage staffing

Better organizational management

Organize users with Departments

Add work-related user attributes

Define work schedules

Improved Backlogs and Sprints

Multiple active sprints without sharing (Enterprise add-on)

Add new or existing work packages to a sprint, backlog bucket or backlog inbox

Multi-select for sprint and backlog filters

Improved drag and drop

Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.7

Project attributes for work package types

Project life cycle widget

PMflex Artefact PDF export

Improved document collaboration

Wiki improvements

Semantic identifiers leave Beta

More powerful calculated fields (Enterprise add-on)

OpenProject 17.7: Migration, installation, updates and support

Credits

OpenProject Roadmap 2026: The strategic topics shaping our development

Jira Migrator and Jira fundamentals

Agile & Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)