About FortyAU

FortyAU is a Tennessee, U.S. based technology consulting firm that builds custom software, data, and AI solutions, especially for healthcare and other regulated industries. Small, embedded teams work inside client environments to deliver and maintain critical applications.

Because they run many concurrent projects across different clients and tech stacks, they needed a consistent way to manage work that still respected data sensitivity and self-hosted constraints. Their previous mix of boards and legacy open-source tooling made it hard to create one reliable operating surface, prompting the move to Plane.

The challenge

Before Plane, FortyAU’s project landscape was scattered across multiple tools. Different teams used Trello or Monday boards, while leadership tried to normalize on OpenProject as a single place to see projects at a high level. OpenProject delivered the basics and fit their open-source, self-hosted preference, but it never became something people enjoyed working in day-to-day.

They ran into a predictable set of problems:

• teams juggled different tools depending on the client,
• weak adoption of the “standard” tool, and
• too much time spent fighting the system instead of managing work.

Tools in use included:

• Trello for lightweight boards on smaller engagements, without enough structure for complex, cross-team work.
• Monday for visual boards and timelines, adding another silo rather than a central system.
• OpenProject for use as the attempted standard, functionally capable but cumbersome to learn, support, and extend.

The result was uneven adoption, fragmented reporting, and more admin effort than a services firm can afford. Teams had to fight the tooling just to answer basic questions about what was in flight and who was responsible.

Why Plane was the best fit

FortyAU went looking for modern, open-source project management they could run on their own infrastructure, with full access to data and room to layer in their own AI workflows. Plane showed up in that search as a self-hosted, actively developed option with a roadmap that matched the gaps they’d been living with. After an initial conversation, Duane was clear: if Plane shipped a specific set of features over the next few quarters, they would move the company.

Self-hosted and open-source, without feeling dated
Plane gave them a modern application they could host themselves, align with upcoming SOC 2 and ISO work, and still participate in an active open-source product rather than a stagnant fork.

Flexible for both simple boards and complex programs
Teams can keep small streams in straightforward Kanban boards or model larger programs with dependencies and initiatives. They don’t need a dedicated admin, but they were no longer forcing basic boards to support complex project delivery.

Service work handled through Intake
Intake forms and email-to-Plane support the growing volume of maintenance and recurring work. Many support requests still originate from email; turning those into structured work items has become a quiet but important backbone.

Docs and templates inside the workspace
Pages and templates let PMs standardize requirements, change logs, and risk lists per project. Instead of every project inventing its own documentation style, they can enforce a consistent set of project docs that actually live where the work is tracked.

Client-friendly guest access
Clients can be invited into boards as read-mostly guests without license drama. That removes a common blocker to giving customers direct visibility into the flow of work.

Burned by the previous open-source experience, FortyAU intentionally avoided a hard cutover. They brought Plane in for selected projects, validate system stability and the delivery of key features, then expanded its footprint. Over 13–14 months, Plane kept shipping the items they cared about, skepticism faded, and most teams now use Plane as their default project surface.

Implementation and rollout

FortyAU’s rollout was incremental: early pilots first, then more teams and maintenance streams as confidence grew. In parallel, the company matured its own project management practices, with Plane keeping pace rather than lagging behind.

Structure and configuration

They use Plane to:

• Track client projects with work item types tuned for design and development.
• Run service-desk style maintenance with Intake and email-created work items.
• Reshape sprawling backlogs into cross-project initiatives that span several projects and teams.

Page and project templates are being standardized so that new projects start with a fixed set of documents instead of ad-hoc pages.

Integrations and extensions

Slack integration is active for surfacing work into communication channels. Self-hosted GitLab integration is next in line. On the AI side, they are experimenting with Plane’s MCP connector and internal LLM tooling to transform call transcripts into requirements, and eventually, Plane work items.

A year on Plane

After more than a year, Plane has become the default system for tracking client delivery and recurring work.

Higher adoption and less tool fatigue
Because Plane feels closer to modern SaaS than to older open-source platforms, adoption has been stronger and less forced. Teams aren’t being pushed into a tool they dislike; they’re working where it makes sense.

Service work flowing through one place
Intake and email-to-Plane give maintenance and support work a clear, repeatable path into projects. As more streams are consolidated, the administrative overhead of running maintenance projects drops.

Better structure for large engagements
Using initiatives to slice big, tangled projects into clearer segments gives PMs and leaders a more truthful picture of how multi-team programs are progressing, rather than everything living in a single, overloaded board.

Client visibility without heavy process
Guest access lets clients see boards directly, which reduces the need for bespoke reports and makes conversations about status more grounded in current work.

For a services company whose teams embed inside client environments, a self-hosted system that combines project tracking, documentation, service flows, and open connectors to finance and AI tools provides strategic leverage. Plane has moved FortyAU from scattered tools and reluctant adoption to a single workspace that can grow with their client base and compliance requirements.