Opening Business Box: Leantime

Companies and freelancers running several clients need project management systems. There are dozens of such services; the best known are Asana, Trello and Jira. 

The Business Box package holds a powerful and very convenient alternative — Leantime. 

We will go through what this service can do and what it offers. Every user of the Business Box package will be able to configure Leantime for their own tasks. 

The Lean approach in two words 

To understand what sets Leantime apart, a few words about the Lean concept in project management. The key idea is to treat resources sparingly while improving the result. 

Lean has no set of formalised ready-made practices. Instead there is a set of devices for solving small problems. But how do you follow such an approach? It is simpler than it seems: create flow, look for waste and remove it. Flow in the Lean concept is the uninterrupted process of creating a product of value to people. 

What is Leantime? 

Leantime is an open source solution for project management. It holds several tools for controlling projects from the idea stage to delivery. Leantime will run several projects at once, which is convenient both for companies and for freelancers.

Leantime is built on the five principles of Lean:

• identify value;

• create the environment: map the value stream;

• build the working process;

• start a pull system;

• continuously improve the quality of the service, the product and the processes. 

In this article we show what makes Leantime particular and why the tool is worth trying. 

Leantime is built on PHP, Laravel and MySQL. 

Leantime's advantages and unusual functions 

Let us look at the particulars that set Leantime apart from similar services. 

A simple interface 

Leantime's user interface was built to save users time. Every detail here helps you focus on the work. The side panel gives access to all the program's main functions, and Leantime also opens in full-screen mode.

An idea manager: do not ignore your ideas

In many project management solutions ideas are often ignored. Most project managers and developers tend to use separate services for recording ideas and working on them. Leantime has an idea manager built in.

Ideas can easily be tied to a milestone, and a discussion board can be created for each one. Working with the manager, you can switch between Kanban mode and a list.

Managing ideas the kanban way is split into several stages:

• generating ideas;

• detailing them;

• discussion;

• review;

• acceptance;

• rejection. 

Switching between a list and kanban mode 

Leantime has a built-in Kanban style. In that mode it is easy to drag tasks, ideas and research around, and you can switch quickly between kanban and a list whenever you like. 

Leantime's main capabilities and functions 

The tool has several more functions: 

• managing a project's stages with Gantt charts;

• managing the schedule the team works to;

• building and viewing project reports;

• project retrospectives;

• different roles and access levels for users (client, administrator, team manager, client manager);

• built-in two-factor authentication to protect data;

• quick integration with the Mattermost, Slack and Zulip messengers;

• convenient export of all the information as CSV;

• a sprint manager for working the Agile way;

• file storage on AWS S3 or on the local file system;

• an interface in English, Spanish and other languages. 

Leantime can be downloaded and installed free. It can also be used as a cloud service inside the Business Box package, together with the other tools, which gives you scope for integrations and for organising teamwork. 

Summary 

We have described only Leantime's basic capabilities. The tool will be useful to teams of developers, marketers, business consultants and others. A project management system helps you work with several clients at once and keep the client informed of progress. 

What Leantime offers opens plenty of room for experiment and for unconventional solutions. If you are a project manager or a business owner, do try Leantime and Business Box from Host4Biz.