A simple, enterprise-grade task board - why is this so hard?!

I'm surprised, in 2023, that I'm writing this - but working in a highly-regulated industry, I'm still not aware of a simple, clean, secure, enterprise-grade task-based Kanban board / task manager that supports an agile approach to task management outside of software development and strictly controlled projects.

This feels like it should be so easy to deliver, but finding one appears impossible.

The Teams planner promised so much but, six years in, remains awful; "all or nothing" access permissions, no undo, no restore, no audit logs, no change log, no recycle bin, no ability to add statuses (no "blocked"), no way to shuffle cards forward without changing the due date (and you can't even schedule by start date). Short of planning your own holiday, I think it's a totally flawed tool.

At the other end of the spectrum, product sets from the likes of JIRA and Azure Boards are great for managing complex software development projects but simply not designed with the average business user in mind who simply wants to manage the deluge of tasks that hit them every day, some themed around what are mini-projects, some of which are just one-off items of work.

And whereas I hoped MS Project, Trello or others may fill the gap, when I looked at them they all tend to fall short in some critical way (most often in the security controls space).

So what do I need? From a features perceptive;

• A simple interface - not unlike Planner - where I can either create cards on a board or tasks as lists - but crucially, with controls.
• Simple statuses that I can define - whether "To Do, In Progress, Done" or something more complex that we can configure (Planner not having the ability to support a "blocked" or "parked" card with future scheduling is insane).
• The ability to view all tasks across multiple projects on a per-user or per-team basis, allowing conversations about scheduling and prioritisation to be had in a true cross-silo function (Dev Ops across the enterprise - true enterprise agile prioritisation). And perhaps the ability to assign to a team backlog, for the team to locally manage and pick up.
• The ability to handle dependencies between tasks
• Control over access - in any given team, I need to be able to control whether someone can create, edit, delete or just view tasks. Perhaps on a per-user, per-team or per-project basis.
• Ideally, the ability to create other fields that I can drive reports on (or at least a sensible set of fields that I can use) - project name, tranche, sprint, effort etc..

And from a security / enterprise perspective?

• Integration to Active Directory so that we can manage access securely and centrally
• The ability to restrict access or functionality where necessary - not allowing downloads outside of a given IP range, or restricting access to work machines
• Robust security controls evidenced by third party assurance (ideally more than just an ISO27001)
• Security controls "in app" that are centrally administered and which can't be overridden by the end user
• A delivery model (I'm assuming this is cloud based) where we can lock the geography of our data.
• Full change management / auditing - so that we know who changed what, and can step back changes where necessary.

Have you discovered a tool that I'm obviously missing? Or have tools like Project, Trello or Monday evolved since I looked at them last?

Please do let me know!