Why would you build (another) Task & Project Management Tool? The answer is: I did not like the existing ones. Sure there are many and sure they are not bad, but somehow none of the ones I tested was really what I was searching for.
My little PM journey
In the past years I worked for several companies and they used several different Task and Project management tools (the “typical” ones Asana, Jira, Trello, MS Project, Mattermost, YouTrack, Mantis, …). So I had a bit of background knowledge on how to use these tools. The setups in the companies was different, the requirements were different, the team sizes were different. Some tools were just for bug tracking, some were more for developer task management, others were used by the entire company. Some tools made more sense, some just seem to add extra burden on the people.
In early 2026 it was time to switch jobs and search for something new. I played with a couple of ideas and at one point had so many ideas, that I wanted to start sorting, prioritizing and categorizing them. I went back to the tools I knew and tried them (again) for my own use case, but none really worked. The ones that worked “good enough” as a software, had other issues: Not all features are included in the “small” versions, paid versions were expensive or you needed to buy 5 “seats” although only 1 or 2 were needed. Finally I gave up the search. With my 25+ years in SaaS and software development I finally arrived at a place where I was like “there must be a better way, lets re-think this from the ground up”.
The first steps
The first steps of the new project were done quickly: A framework was set up that helps to easily create models, methods, automations and so on – while reducing the need to actually “code” them. We had used similar frameworks in the past – I wanted mine to go one step further and also handle generating pages, design, the menu and these things.
Over the course of 3 months a simple API tool grew into a big framework with thousands of lines of code. Once the framework was done, it was time to put it into a first test and start developing the first task management routines.
The goals
In order to make a difference with my tool I wanted to avoid the things that annoyed me with the existing tools. It became clear that there were 4 main topics that I just wanted to do better:
Make it compliant
For the past 8 years I worked in the “compliance industry” and hence there was always a strong focus on what is “correct” and what should be avoided. When looking at the tools out there, either real compliance was not achievable (e.g. US companies with questionable data processing methods) or was promised but never really held (e.g. promised EU hosting but used US cloud providers to do this).
Make it useful
So many tools have soooooo many features. Lots and lots of settings, millions of buttons, icons everywhere. Sometimes useful features are there, but “well hidden”. Sometimes unnecessary features were presented/highlighted as special. Sometimes the tools were too specific (e.g. made for developers but not management) or not specific or customizable enough.
Make it clever
So often I ran in situations where I had to use multiple tools at the same time because the company decided on them but they would just not play well together. Often enough I had situations of switching contexts between answering an e-mail, creating a task based on the e-mail and then talking to someone on Teams or Slack about that task. These situations just felt like a lot of wasted time. Hence my goal is to find ways how to make “my” tools actually clever.
Have a price that makes sense
As said above, why should I pay for 5 licenses when I only need 3 users in my account? Why should I pay for extra features where I feel they should be already included in the “standard” version? Why do I need to pay extra for compliance? (shouldn’t it be the requirement for the tool in general?)
Bonus: AI is the future (?)
Another thing I had in mind while juggling ideas is how to (effectively) use AI with such a product. Basically any tool out there now supports some form of AI or already comes with AI. But do I really want a tool that has its own AI built in? Why wouldn’t I just use the AI tools I already have (e.g. my Claude/OpenAI/Gemini/… account)? Why should I pay extra for AI credits when I already have an account with enough credits with some provider? Also: Wouldn’t my own AI have more/better context information about me and my projects instead of trying to make the tools own AI “smart enough”?
Conclusion
From all of the above I ended up with one answer: Too many tools do too much wrong. Let’s try to make something that really works for me. If it also works for others – perfect. If it becomes a business – nice. If nobody uses it and everyone hates it – that’s also fine with me.
Hence maybe the question shouldn’t be “Why another PM tool?” but “Which is YOUR tool?” (the one that fits you). For me that’s what Lupineo should become.