I had a meeting with a company called \\@Task today. Nate Bowler, who was one of our many stars at iMALL, is their CTO. \\@Task provides thin-client project management and workflow software to customers like Novell and other large companies that you've heard of (since they don't mention them on their website, I won't mention them here).

\\@Task combines workflow, collaboration, and project management to actually drive the project or process from the tool rather than using it as simply a static document that records progress. Because it assigns tasks to group members based on the workflow and tracks completion, a manager can see at a glance where the project is, who's got unfinished deliverables, and so can everyone else. Consequently, the tool functions as a dashboard and uses tranparency to enforce good behavior. They're using SOAP to interface with traditional CRM and ERP systems like PeopleSoft so that hours, for example, can be entered into the accounting system from the project tracking tool automatically.

All in all, I think it sounds like a great improvement over other project tools I've seen. One of the things I was thinking is that it would be a great tool to build a lot of software development processes. Most of these are enforced by culture and training with little tool support to help foster the correct process.