Artech Background - Essay Example in Management

Artech Information Systems LLC (Artech), at the forefront of the staffing industry, is a minority and women-owned business enterprise (MWBE). It aims at maximizing universal workforce solutions for its clients. Having been established in 1992, the enterprise has a deep heritage and has proven its expertise over time with insightful market intelligence, which has enabled it to secure long-term partnerships, specifically with some Fortune 500, as well as governmental customers seeking to acquire exceptional professional resources from Artech (Artech LLC, n.d). The organization helps its customers to minimize their total cost of ownership (TCO) by offering a variety of technological and staffing solutions. These include staffing individual talents such as Information Technology, engineering, clinical, and professional services among other variant staffing resourcing. It is also involved in deploying teams that can effectively accomplish projects for the clients. It is delivers statement of work resources (SOW), as well as project management of projects with a defined scope of services. It is also involved in the management of vendor and supplier staffing. The companys fast growth can be attributed to innovation, and thrives in high demand and fast-paced industries (Artech LLC, n.d).

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Also, Artechs goal, just like other companies within the industry, aims to satisfy and meet the expectations of the customer. This is derived from its innovative and growth culture augmented by use of sophisticated technology, as well as the finely tuned process that are the reason why the organization routinely seeks to meet the expectation of its clients. To meets these needs, Artech provides the most efficient, innovative, and cost-effective workforce solutions in the market today. For this reason, the enterprise seeks to capitalize on its quality-certified and mature processes thus providing customized programs and solutions that enables its clients to optimize the use of their supply chain management system, as well as increasing the time used to market the workforce requirements and solutions, hence, accelerating the projects process. Some of the workforce solutions that the company provides include staffing, staff augmentation in contingent, contractual, and temporary labor, direct hire through permanent placement, pay rolling via client referrals and pass throughs, workforce transitioning, formulation of master vendor programs, as well as Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). Also, customers take advantage of these workforce solutions by balancing them with IT SOW Project Services in instances when the services scope and end deliverables are well defined or whenever there is an outsourcing project with a strong business case. The companys key SOW services entail ERP Solutions (ERPS), Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing (BI&DW), Application Development & Maintenance (ADM), Network Engineering & Infrastructure Services (NE&IS), as well as Application Integration (App Int) (Artech LLC, n.d). All these services are value maximized by ensuring that it uses a client-centric and excellent project management models where the company provides its client with national and global coverage, a dedicated team, executive oversight, quarterly market analysis, forecasting, and recommendations formulation, and account management and service delivery points of contact.

Artechs Project Management Methodology

The methodology that the company uses is aimed at promoting the delivery of quality products to meet the wishes of the clienteles and well as meeting all project deliverables within the stipulated time and budgetary allocation. The project management methodology Artech uses provides standard methods and guidelines to ensure that the project the company undertakes for its clients are disciplined, consistent, and well-managed. It is built upon a philosophy of effective project management encapsulated by efficient controls and good planning that are coordinated via a well-structured organization of each project.

The methodology is derived from techniques that follow best practices that have been developed over the years through experience and industry standards spearheaded by the project management body, the Project Management Institute (PMI). The methodology is also driven by Artechs ambition to incorporate Software Engineering Institute management standards, and thus, the project methodology the company utilizes is designed to comply with software Capability Maturity Model (SW-CNM) Level 4 goals (Artech LLC, n.d). It also blends with the latest technologies governed by the best industry standards, as well as aligning its design with the clients expectations while also observing quality. Ideally, the client and quality are the main driving forces of the Artechs Project Management Methodology. Being flexible, the methodology also incorporates change management, where it is inclined to the changing needs of the customer along with predicting and aligning it with futuristic industry trends. Also, as the PMI advocates, Artechs Project Management Methodology seeks to involve the client in the whole project management lifecycle, and this, as the company asserts, it is the main ingredient of success for each project the company partakes. It also maintains an open-ended approach to the work solutions it provides while also incorporating the industry standards, tools, as well as methodologies so as to achieve the best results, just as the clients expect. Also, as the customer is central to the implementation of any project, Artech ensures that clients are aware of the whereabouts and aspects of the project on a timely basis. This has been made possible by Artechs project team which includes client managers as well as a sample of the user group. Also, project management is all about continuous improvement, and thus, Artech has an internal Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) that is incessantly involved in continuous process risk management, as well as process improvement (Artech LLC, n.d). Also, as the PMI body in the PMBOK provisions require, quality is central to Artechs project implementation initiatives. For this reason, it has a Quality Assurance (QA) group that ensures that the quality of the products or final project deliverables is not compromised. The QA group along with other project management processes improve feedback and knowledge repository for projects, thus enhancing the methodologys understanding of projects standards, risks, and peculiarities. Also, in order to ensure continuous improvement, SEPG takes action to conduct Artechs internal knowledge transfer sessions in order to obtain the best practices from variant groups, thus enhancing its comprehension of the various modules within the paradigm of project management processes.

As the client is central to implementation of project, Artech advises them on the current industry trends, practices, and standards thus enabling them to revise the already existing ones thus ensuring that their practices are aligned to the current industry trends. Also, to ensure project flexibility, Artech makes sure that it has factored in all the requirements, guidelines, and standards the client has specified, and these are integrated in the project process. The risk management, as well as quality management takes these client requirements into account whenever they are processing their reports and assessments. The diagram below represents the main constituents promulgated by Artechs project management process. As shown, the project management methodology incorporates three main elements, these are: Atechs core values, project management areas, and lastly, a four-phased implementation methodology (Artech LLC, n.d). These will be discussed in detail while comparing them with the other theoretical models used in project management.

Figure 1. Artechs Project Management Methodology: Core values, project management areas, and a four-phased implementation methodology.

Artechs Project Management Methodology in Comparison to other Project management Theoretical Models

Core Values

Artechs Project Management Methodology is based on 4 core values, these are open communication, client focus, team spirit, and management attention.

Client Focus

Artech ensures that each project management activity has the client as the central focus to ensure that their needs and expectations are constantly met. It also recognizes the fact that if the best interest of the client are served, then it will serve its best interest, which is growth and ensuring that the company is highly profitable. This is in line with PMBOKs requirements that that the needs of the customers are met.

Open Communication

This emboldens and ensures that there is free communication between all project levels. Ideally, when compared to the PMIs Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) requirements, a project management methodology should have a communication management plan, which essentially provides a description of how the team members, sponsor, the management, as well as the users communicate within the project parameters. As such, it provides a mechanism of how communication will be planned, monitored, structured and control (PMI, 2013). As such, Artech ensures this is upheld by establishing and keeping the lines of communication open for the entire team, including the clients, users, and sponsor. This ensures that the company can freely communicate status and review reports, which enables the company to predict and measure performance.

Team Spirit

Due to the escalating trend of project teams being distributed in many locations, offshore, offsite, and, onsite, Artech aims at building a good team spirit with well-defined goals, and as part of the continuous process improvement, SEPG has initiated Technical Working Groups (TWG) from a variety of projects, and this has been beneficial to the company as it allows for fair and free dialogue over contentious issues. Senior SEPG members are responsible for guiding them, and thus, suggestions forwarded are implemented to mitigate conflicts.

Management Attention

Since Artech is a big company, small projects may be lost due to the huge attention given to larger ones. However, Artech has a way of ensuring that all projects are successfully completed, which entails SEPG and QA groups. These together, work across the entire organization to facilitate effective cross-project knowledge transfers, as well as incorporation of the best practices. Also. The senior management is kept abreast of all projects progress via formal status reports. In addition, all project managers can directly access the top management to resolve any project issues.

Management Areas

The aforementioned core values are encompassed in eight management areas that the company identifies for providing successful projects. These are discussed below:

Change Management

It involves procedures of tracking all change requests for each project. It entails prioritizing and assigning change requests, and also reviewing and coordinating with the customer. It also analyses the impact of taking a decision, as well as the risks involved, and thus, providing a mechanism for mitigation. Changes are categorized in accordance to how complex they are. Changes that do not require the customers intervention are directed for execution. Artechs change model has been represented by the diagram below.

Communication Management

It describes the process of instituting communication procedures and protocols between the clients and the company, which as the company purports is given high priority. This is provided in the planning stages. The company makes prime use of technology via phone and emails among other platforms. The communication model that Artech uses is...