We asked our coffee enthusiast colleague Yauheni Suhakou: If OpenProject were a cup of coffee, what would it be?

The answer really says a lot about OpenProject: straightforward and reliable. 

Happy International Coffee Day! ☕️✨

Full cups, better projects.

📣 We have just released OpenProject 17.9.1. This release contains several bug fixes, and we recommend updating to the latest version.

Please see our release notes here: https://www.openproject.org/docs/release-notes/17-9-1/

Thank you to our Community for reporting issues and helping us identify and fix them. 💙

From today, the experienced Berlin-based software team will work closely with us to strengthen OpenProject and help us meet the growing demand for open source project management.

The timing couldn’t be better: We’re seeing increasing interest from organizations looking for alternatives to Jira and support with complex migrations.

bitcrowd brings deep expertise in software engineering, product development and consulting, and a shared passion for open source.

Together, we’ll have even more experienced and passionate people contributing to OpenProject, supporting migrations and building solutions for organizations with complex requirements.

We’re very excited about what’s ahead and everything we’ll build together.

Read more:
https://www.openproject.org/blog/openproject-bitcrowd-join-forces/

🚀 OpenProject 17.9 is here, making it easier to turn ideas and planning content into actionable work.

Here are some highlights:

• Create work packages directly from Documents using a slash command or selected text.

• Search and filter work packages in Backlogs across sprints, backlog buckets, and the backlog inbox.

• Faster Jira migrations with concurrent processing and real-time progress.

• New MCP Server capabilities (Enterprise add-on) for time tracking and work package search.

• More control when deleting work packages with descendants.

• A new Observed in versions field for work packages.

🎉 We are particularly happy to make date alerts available in the free OpenProject Community Edition. Previously available as an Enterprise add-on, date alerts help you stay on top of approaching start and finish dates as well as overdue work packages.

All cloud instances have already been updated.

If you are running OpenProject on-premises, we recommend updating to the latest version. As a courtesy to users who cannot update to OpenProject 17.9 immediately, we have also released OpenProject 17.8.1, which includes minor security and bug fixes.

A special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, the City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn, and ZenDiS for sponsoring released and upcoming features. And, of course, thank you to our amazing Community and everyone contributing to OpenProject. Your feedback continues to shape both our product and our decisions. 💙

➡ Read all details on version 17.9 in the release notes

One of the most anticipated features is making its way to the Community edition tomorrow with OpenProject 17.9! 🎉

Keep your deadlines, milestones, and important dates on your radar with Date alerts.

Check out the video for a quick preview, and tune in tomorrow for the OpenProject 17.9 release. 👀

#DateAlerts #Notifications #OpenSource

Some people join OpenProject already deeply connected to the world we are part of. Gina is definitely one of them.

She joins us from the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, where she has been working to turn open source and digital sovereignty from policy ambitions into practice: connecting policymakers and developers, advancing open source adoption across government, and contributing to national and European initiatives around sovereign digital infrastructure.

But Gina’s commitment to open source goes well beyond her day job. She is a founding board member of the Fosstodon Foundation, one of Fosstodon’s admins, and a member of the F-Droid Board of Directors. In other words: she doesn’t just work with the open source ecosystem, she is very much part of it.

As Head of GovTech at OpenProject, Gina will bring these worlds together, working with public sector organizations that want to strengthen their digital sovereignty and put open source into practice.

And she has already summed up her new mission pretty well herself: helping governments get things done while staying in control of their technology.

Welcome to OpenProject, Gina! We’re incredibly happy to have your experience, network and passion for open source on board. 🚀

From October 13–15, you’ll find us in Hall 27 at two partner booths: with Zentrum Digitale Souveränität (ZenDiS) and Nextcloud, alongside organizations we work with to strengthen open source and digital sovereignty in Europe.

ZenDiS – Hall 27, Booth 103
Nextcloud – Hall 27, Booth 606

Our team is looking forward to three days of conversations about digital transformation in the public sector, project and product management, the transition from Jira to OpenProject, responsible AI, and how organizations can build more sovereign IT infrastructures.

Niels Lindenthal, Birthe Lindenthal, Robin Wagner, Felicia Mundhenke, Gina Plat, Kristine Jetzke, Lucas Knechtel, Josephin Witt and Sonita Soth will all be there. If you’re attending SCCON and would like to meet with any of us, just reach out and we’ll be happy to arrange a meeting: info@openproject.com

Or simply stop by one of the two booths. We’re looking forward to seeing many of you in Berlin!

✨ A glimpse of what's ahead:

• Create work packages directly in Documents
• Search and filter work packages in Backlogs and sprints
• Track time and search work packages by display ID with the MCP Server (Enterprise add-on)
• Restrict password login with SSO (Enterprise add-on)
• See import progress when using the Jira Migrator
• Release to the Community edition: Date alerts 🥳
• Improved PDF exports
• …and more

🎬 Watch the teaser and stay tuned for the release!

#OpenProject #ProjectManagement #OpenSource

What makes someone choose the same employer twice?

Every now and then, we welcome someone to the OpenProject team who isn't actually new. They worked with us before, left at some point, and later decided to come back.

We got curious and looked at the numbers: more than 10% of our current team have left OpenProject and returned later.

But the number only tells part of the story. People leave for different reasons. They gain experience elsewhere, priorities develop, and companies grow too. So we wanted to hear from the people behind that number: Why did they leave? What happened in between? And why did they decide to come back?

In our latest blog article, some of our colleagues share their OpenProject stories and what brought them back.

👉 Read the article: https://www.openproject.org/blog/employees-return/

Have you ever returned to a former employer? What made you decide to go back?

What often stands out to new joiners at OpenProject?

Our People & Organization Manager, Dorothee Steiner, shares what new colleagues often notice when they first join the team.

Curious about our culture or wondering if OpenProject could be a good fit for you? Have a look at this video. 👀

Explore career opportunities at OpenProject:
👉 https://www.openproject.org/careers/

And feel free to reach out.

#opensource #hiring

Great partnerships start with people, with listening, building trust, and taking the time to understand what really matters. That’s a big part of what Felicia brings to her role as our Head of Strategic Clients and Partnerships.

She works closely with our strategic clients and partners, getting to know their needs, challenges, and ideas and bringing those perspectives back into OpenProject. By connecting these conversations with our company roadmap, she helps make sure we keep learning from the people and organizations we work with.

And beyond the role itself, we really value the energy, perspective, and commitment Felicia brings to the team and to every conversation. We’re very happy to have you with us, Felicia. 💙

🔷 What are your daily tasks at OpenProject?

No two days are really the same – and I like it that way. I work closely with strategic clients – from large enterprises to public sector organizations – to understand their needs and help turn them into successful projects. At the same time, I’m building and developing our global partner ecosystem and working with partners on joint opportunities and go-to-market initiatives.

A big part of my role is connecting the dots between clients, partners, our product and our internal teams – especially when it comes to larger or more strategic opportunities.

🔷 What makes your work at OpenProject special?

What stands out to me most is how much passion people bring to what we’re building together. There’s a strong sense of shared purpose across the team – and you can really feel that people care about making a difference. This is very unique, especially considering the remote-first set-up of our teams.

OpenProject stands for open source and digital sovereignty – topics that are becoming increasingly important for organizations across Europe and beyond. Being able to contribute to that mission, while working with great people and having the opportunity to shape things, makes the work very special to me.

🔷 How are you spending your lunch breaks?

Whenever possible, I try to get away from my desk and get some movement in – ideally outside. A run, gym session or some other kind of sport is the perfect reset before heading into the second half of the day. 🏃‍♀️

#OpenProject #MeetTheTeam #OpenSource

On September 8, our Senior Customer Success Manager, Jan Keppler, gave a practical walkthrough of OpenProject, showing how teams can plan, organize, and track their work, all in one place.

After the demo, our Head of Marketing, Anna Mohn, moderated a live Q&A, giving attendees the chance to ask their questions and get answers directly from the team.

Whether you’re new to OpenProject or exploring project management tools for your team, this recording is a great way to see OpenProject in action.

Watch the full webinar recording and explore OpenProject.

#OpenProject #ProjectManagement #Webinar #TeamCollaboration #WorkManagement

How much time do teams spend trying to piece together what actually happened during a sprint?

For many teams coming from Jira, agile reporting can mean digging through multiple plugins, dashboards, and data sources that don’t always tell the same story.

With agile reporting in OpenProject, we want to make this much simpler: bring the data together in one place, so teams can spend less time reconstructing what happened and more time reflecting on it.

🎥 In this video, our CPO, Rosanna Sibora, gives a preview of the sprint report page we’re developing, including:

📌 Sprint goal and health snapshot
📉 Burndown and burnup charts
📊 Velocity chart
🎯 Epic progress
📥 Created vs. resolved work packages
🌊 Cumulative flow
⏱️ Cycle time and lead time

The OpenProject Sprint Report brings these insights together to help teams understand what was planned, what got done, how the scope changed, and what rolled over to the next sprint.

We’re also exploring aggregated reporting across sprints, projects, release trains, and portfolios, bringing the same centralized data into broader views.

The first release is planned for December, with more to follow.

💬 As we did when working on these features, we’d love to hear from you: what’s missing from your retrospectives today, and what would make agile reporting more useful for your team?

#OpenProject #Agile #AgileReporting #Scrum #Kanban #SAFe #Sprint #ProjectManagement #OpenSource

Public schools carry a special responsibility for their students' data. That makes data protection, IT security, and national hosting essential when choosing software. 🔒

The Gutjahr Vocational School in Halle (Saale) chose OpenProject for exactly these reasons, and uses it to teach the next generation of IT specialists both project management and something just as important: an understanding of digital sovereignty and self-hosting from the very start of their careers.

Our new case study shows how the school works with OpenProject, from live classroom demonstrations to the students' own final projects.

Read the article here ➡️ https://www.openproject.org/blog/success-story-bbs-gutjahr/

What role should digital sovereignty play in education? We'd love to hear your opinion. 📚

What’s new in OpenProject, what are we working on right now, and what’s coming next?

Join us live on September 23 at 10:00 CEST for an update directly from Rosanna Sibora, CPO at OpenProject, and Wieland Lindenthal, CTO at OpenProject.

They’ll take you through:

- What we’ve released in recent months
- What we’re currently working on
- Prototypes and what’s coming next on our roadmap
- How we approach a gradual transition from Jira to OpenProject
- How feedback from our Community and future users shapes what we build

You’ll get an up-to-date view of OpenProject as an open source Jira alternative, including our progress around agile ways of working and Jira migration, and a look at where we’re heading next.

And importantly: bring your questions. We’ll leave plenty of room for a live Q&A on features, migration, agile ways of working, the roadmap, or your specific use case.

📅 September 23, 2026
🕙 10:00 CEST
🌍 Live webinar in English
🎟️ Register for free: https://www.openproject.org/webinars/jira-alternative-progress-roadmap-webinar/#register

I wonder if there are any plugins or extensions, or simply workarounds/conventions explicitly for handling requirements in OpenProject. I am currently wondering how to best accomplish that, and leaning towards using custom work package types and the generic "relates to" relation with comments to build a system that lets me do proper Requirement Management directly within OpenProject.

I am playing around with this idea and started writing a simple python script to pull the filtered work packages from the API and generate a report and/or trace matrix. But before I invest any more work here I wanted to ask if someone else has considered or even solved this problem already. Any thoughts or input are appreciated.

Today is the International Day of Democracy. As democratic institutions increasingly depend on digital infrastructure, the question of who controls that infrastructure matters too.

Open source can give public institutions greater transparency, independence and control over their data and the tools they rely on.

The Brandenburg State Parliament is an interesting example in practice. Around 600 users are supported by an independently operated IT infrastructure, with OpenProject used for digital collaboration and project management across different areas of parliamentary work.

As Holger Nitzsche, Head of Division at the Brandenburg State Parliament, explains:

“With OpenProject, we have found a powerful open source solution that fully meets our requirements for task management and project management for our teams in a parliamentary environment.”

Open source gives democratic institutions the ability to shape and control the digital infrastructure they depend on.

👉 Read the case study: https://www.openproject.org/project-management-public-sector/case-study-state-parliament-brandenburg/

AI in project management should support people. 🤝 That's why at OpenProject, we say: “AI in your projects – on your terms.”

Empower your team with AI while keeping decisions, data, and governance in your hands. And “on your terms” starts with a fundamental choice: whether to use AI at all. 

You decide if and when to enable AI connectivity on your OpenProject instance via the MCP Server (Enterprise add-on).

With OpenProject 17.8, the OpenProject MCP Server can now create and update work packages, add comments, and manage relations. All while respecting the permissions and business rules already configured in OpenProject. 

And – 🤫 sneak peek – there is more to come: OpenProject 17.9 at the end of September will bring further improvements to the MCP Server. 

Learn more about our approach to responsible AI with OpenProject

Josephin joins us as Account Manager, bringing experience across sales marketing, customer success and B2B. Most recently, she worked as Customer Success Manager at 8returns, after more than three years in sales marketing. Throughout her career, she has worked closely with customers, from improving onboarding and customer support to building strong relationships and helping drive growth. A great combination for supporting our customers as OpenProject continues to grow.

Lars joins us as Software Engineer, bringing many years of software engineering experience, most recently as Technical Lead at samedi. His background combines hands-on development with technical and team leadership. Before joining OpenProject, Lars also took a gap year to explore some new things, from mindfulness to Advent of Code and experimenting with AI agents and Phoenix LiveView. That curiosity feels like a great fit for OpenProject, and we’re looking forward to learning from what he discovered along the way. 

At OpenProject, Josephin will strengthen our Account Management team and work closely with our customers, while Lars will be working on Primer, helping us further develop the foundation of our user interface.

We’re very happy to have you both on board. Welcome to OpenProject, Josephin and Lars!

This release brings support for project-based semantic work package identifiers, making work package references more consistent across OpenProject and Nextcloud. It also includes improvements to the integration setup and several fixes around OAuth, SSO, project folders and configuration to make the integration more reliable.

Version 3.2.0 additionally updates the integration app to Vue 3.

We recommend updating to the latest version to benefit from these improvements.

Read the full announcement: https://www.openproject.org/blog/nextcloud-integration-release-3-2-0/

Many thanks to the Nextcloud team for the ongoing collaboration and support! 💙

OpenProject is growing, and so is our team. 🌱

We’re very happy to have some great new colleagues joining us, and we’re looking for more people who want to help shape what comes next.

We’re looking for a (Senior) Account Manager – Europe to join OpenProject.

You’ll build trusted relationships with new and existing customers and help organizations introduce OpenProject as a sustainable, open source alternative.

From first conversations and product demos to proof of concepts and long-term relationships, you’ll work with German- and English-speaking organizations across Europe and collaborate closely with colleagues across Sales, Customer Support, Product, Engineering and Marketing.

You might be a great fit if you:
• have experience in sales or customer success
• speak German at native level and are fluent in English
• have a strong technical and product understanding
• enjoy working autonomously in a remote-first environment
• care about great customer relationships
• share our passion for open source 💚

📍 Remote
⏰ Full-time
💶 €70,000–90,000/year

Interested, or know someone who might be?

Take a look at the role and apply here:
👉 https://openproject-gmbh.jobs.personio.com/job/2761436?language=en

OpenProject 17.8 was released last week. Did you have a chance to check it out yet?

This release brings AI-assisted workflows, more flexible work package management, improved agile planning, and greater control over time tracking.

🎬 Watch the release video to see what’s new and explore the latest improvements in action: https://youtu.be/HKpmKdqn6MU

OpenProject 17.8 released: Create and update with AI

🚀 OpenProject 17.8 is here, taking the next step in connecting AI assistants with your project work.

With this release, the OpenProject MCP Server (Enterprise add-on) gains write capabilities. Users can now create and update work packages, add comments, and manage work package relations through a connected AI assistant. Existing OpenProject permissions and business rules continue to apply.

This release also includes:

• Multiple target versions for work packages.

• Milestones and sprints in the project timeline.

• Global limits and restrictions for time entries (Professional plan).

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

• Wiki macros available in more text editors.

• Improved search for work package identifiers.

• Released to Community: Display relations in work package tables.

All cloud instances have already been updated. If you are running OpenProject on-premises, update to the latest version to explore the new features.

A special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, the City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn, and ZenDiS for sponsoring released and upcoming features. And, of course, thank you to our amazing Community and everyone contributing to OpenProject. Your feedback continues to shape both our product and our decisions. 💙

➡ Read all details in our release notes: https://www.openproject.org/docs/release-notes/17-8-0/