LiquidPlanner is adding more collaboration tools to its online project management application because people, not tasks, create most of the problems in project management. And PBworks is adding task management tools to its wiki (originally PBwiki) because when people collaborate, they usually have shared tasks to accomplish. It looks like these Software-As-A-Service companies are meeting in the middle, but really they are just pulling good features from each other's bag of tricks.

I don't believe either company drew inspiration from the other as much as from customers. PB Works marketing vice president Chris Yeh says PBworks is used by 2,000 creative agencies to manage projects, “so we decided to give them more tools to make things easier.” Thus the origin of PBworks Project Edition aimed at project oriented work like marketing, advertising, public relations and design professionals.

Two new features, Project Management and Multi-space Networks, address the need for better control of tasks and management and make it easier to allow customers and contractors to work together with agencies. The PM tools make it possible to assign tasks and milestones to individuals or groups. You can see all the tasks for individuals across all projects, or all the individuals involved in a particular project. Smaller tasks roll up into larger defined milestones and you even get some graphical charts.

Networks of users for projects and their assigned workspaces can include coworkers, customers and suppliers. Full access control allows you to specify who can see what on each project. This eliminates quite a bit of “document tag” as everyone involved can see the same information on one screen rather than e-mailing documents, spreadsheets and proof pages to each other.

Pricing varies a bit from the standard PBworks pricing of $8/user/month. Project Edition charges $20/user/month, but all the “guest licenses” for clients and contractors are free. If each creative manager adds in a client contact and an outside contractor you're ahead of the price game.

This pricing model works much like the PBworks Legal Edition, which was released a couple of months ago after PBworks discovered that 24 of the top 25 law firms, or at least some of their employees, were already using PBworks for legal projects. “Legal work is high value, collaborative, and research and writing intensive,” says Yeh. “It's the ultimate knowledge work and very text oriented.”