This article is based on a report originally published on devops.com in December 2018.
What Is Anaxi?
Anaxi is a project management tool designed specifically for DevOps teams. The company reached general availability of its web application in late 2018, complementing an existing iPhone app. At the time of the announcement, an Android version was still in development.
Unlike general-purpose project management tools, Anaxi was built around the reality that modern development workflows span multiple source code repositories and involve complex dependencies between components. Its core goal is to give project managers and engineering leaders a consolidated view of work happening across those repositories.
The Problem Anaxi Aims to Solve
As DevOps practices mature, development teams increasingly distribute their work across multiple repositories. This creates a tracking and visibility problem: it becomes difficult to answer basic questions such as which code belongs to which project, which teams are making progress, and how individual components relate to one another within a larger application.
According to Anaxi CEO Marc Verstaen, one specific pain point is the labeling system used by platforms like GitHub. Labels are entered as free-form text, with no enforced taxonomy or categorization. This makes it hard to:
- Monitor all tasks associated with a specific label consistently
- Navigate from one task to the next in a logical sequence
- Get a coherent cross-repository view of project status
Anaxi addresses this by allowing project managers to edit issues and pull requests directly in the application, with changes synchronized back to the connected GitHub and Jira projects.
Analytics and Developer Productivity Tracking
Beyond repository navigation, Anaxi applies analytics to surface team and individual developer performance metrics. Examples cited at the time of launch include weekly reporting on:
- Code added and removed — tracking the net contribution of each developer over time
- Refactoring activity — identifying when teams are cleaning up existing code rather than adding features
- Code churn — measuring how frequently code is rewritten, which can indicate instability or unclear requirements
These metrics are intended to give engineering managers and project leads data to support planning decisions, rather than relying on anecdotal progress updates.
Dependency Management in a Microservices World
Verstaen highlighted a broader industry trend driving demand for tools like Anaxi: the shift from monolithic applications to microservices architectures. As organizations decompose applications into smaller, independently deployable services, the number of inter-component dependencies grows significantly.
This creates a prioritization challenge for IT operations teams. Understanding which components depend on which others is essential for sequencing development work and avoiding bottlenecks. Anaxi’s approach is to surface these dependency relationships so that project managers can make informed decisions about what to build or fix first.
Multi-Repository and Cross-Company Projects
Another practical reality driving the need for a tool like Anaxi is that projects rarely live in a single repository. Development teams often have preferences for particular platforms, and in many organizations there is insufficient authority at the project management level to mandate a single repository standard. Projects that span multiple vendors or partner companies further compound the problem, as each organization may use its own repository platform.
Anaxi’s multi-repository support is designed to let project managers work across these boundaries without requiring organizational standardization on a single tool or platform.
Business Visibility and the Role of the Modern Project Manager
The broader context for tools like Anaxi is increased executive scrutiny of software delivery timelines, particularly for applications that are directly tied to revenue generation or customer experience. Business stakeholders want real-time visibility into development progress, not quarterly status reports.
This places new demands on DevOps project managers. The traditional project management toolkit — built around waterfall-era workflows — does not map well onto iterative, repository-driven DevOps delivery models. Project managers who can adapt to these environments and deliver consistent, predictable results are increasingly valued within their organizations.
Key Takeaways
- Anaxi launched its web application in late 2018, targeting DevOps teams managing work across multiple repositories.
- It integrates with GitHub and Jira, allowing issues and pull requests to be edited in Anaxi and synced back to the source platform.
- The tool surfaces developer productivity metrics such as code churn, lines added/removed, and refactoring activity on a weekly basis.
- It is positioned to help project managers navigate the dependency complexity introduced by microservices architectures.
- The product reflects a broader market need for project management tooling that is native to modern, distributed DevOps workflows rather than adapted from traditional software development approaches.