You should check out Linear. Our team momentum and velocity has been great ever since moving to this tool.
It doesn't provide the granular control or extensibility like Jira, but do try to read about their manifesto and how things should work.
What's interesting is your wireframe actually looks a lot like Basecamp, with Sprint options. At one point we were using Basecamp as well, and find Basecamp don't cater to more complicated ticketing and workflow.
I really like Linear— what I like best about it is that almost every functionality is accessible via keyboard shortcuts. I would go so far as to say that should be a first design principle of any productivity tool, especially one aimed at developers. Kitemaker is similar, I used to use it but switched to Linear
Thanks for mentioning us (I'm one of the founders of Kitemaker). Totally agree that keyboard shortcuts, a clean design, and simple navigation should be at the core of every productivity tool, which is why we did that as well.
FWIW, we built Kitemaker to tackle some of the points that the original articles highlights, but of course, our solution is a bit different from the authors. Our basic idea was that each work item should be a collaborative workspaces and allow you to track work at the level of deliverables (which basically is what many would say is the correct level, but AFAIK no issue tracker actually supports).
Also, always curious why you switched to Linear :)
It doesn't provide the granular control or extensibility like Jira, but do try to read about their manifesto and how things should work.
What's interesting is your wireframe actually looks a lot like Basecamp, with Sprint options. At one point we were using Basecamp as well, and find Basecamp don't cater to more complicated ticketing and workflow.