Coordinating the work of dozens and even hundreds of people is a terrifying task but that's what Clarizen does and does it very well judging from the company's impressive growth, adding more than 200 customers a month.

Avinoam Nowogrodski, co-founder and CEO says that most project management is done by a kludge of email and Excel, an awkward combination that often leads to late delivery and many other problems.

"With our software we can make project management far more efficient and predictable. You can see who is doing what and who is falling behind."

The transparency that Clarizen provides into the work process also means that members of the project team have tremendous clarity into the whole project and it also means that it creates a social enterprise naturally -- without any need to mimic popular social networks within a business context.

Clarizen says it has more than 1500 customers who have completed 2.7 million tasks. The company is fueling its strong growth with $12 million raised in April 2011, to a total of $36 million.

The software is offered as a service, which means it's easy for small departments to start using it. It costs $500 per user per year.

Earlier this year, Clarizen published a survey that found that 70% of workers do not like status meetings and don't find them helpful. About 40% said they were a waste of time.

It's this kind of insight into best practices for project management that Clarizen provides based on a very large set of actual practices.

"Project management is a huge headache if you don't have the right tools. We have very passionate customers. They tell us that using Clarizen has changed the culture of the company."