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staff augmentation
Mike Jackowski Updated: 13 Sep 2022 7 min to read

Staff Augmentation – Best Practices for a Client to Optimize Inquiries & Management

In the era of the dynamically changing business world, the demand for IT experts is constantly growing. But the lack of skilled software developers is also the reality of today’s world.

Fortunately, IT staff augmentation is the solution to this problem, and it comes along with numerous benefits. It is a type of outsourcing service on a contractual basis provided by an outsourcing agency to aggregate the skills and knowledge of an existing in-house team.

In this article, you will find about the staff augmentation model and how it can be helpful for your business. Also, you can learn how it will help you focus on your main business and decrease the workload of the existing team.

What is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy to hire skilled tech resources externally to cover a temporary or permanent position in your team. It allows you to choose candidates that fit your requirements and to extend or cut your augmented staff team whenever required. A staff augmentation provider will help you add a specific skill set for your in-house development team on a long-term or a short-term basis.

These resources are directly employed by the vendor. Thus the liability and cost to hire full-time employees are eliminated. Also, any engineers working on your project will be working only on one dedicated project at a time.

Staff Augmentation vs Project Outsourcing

Project outsourcing is when you outsource some aspect of the project or the whole project to an external vendor. In comparison, staff augmentation adds a virtual talent pool to your local team to help you manage the workload.

The main difference between staff augmentation and IT project sourcing is that the outsourcing company is responsible for managing projects and deliverables in an outsourcing model. While in the staff augmentation model, the project management is taken care of by the in-house team, and the business itself is held accountable for results.

Why do companies choose to Staff Augmentation Services?

The lack of essential skills in the market is one of the primary reasons businesses are shifting to staff augmentation. Not finding enough experienced developers or top talent in a particular skill is forcing companies to change to the staff augmentation model.

You can hire trustworthy and reliable staff augmentation services that can help you by providing access to a dedicated offshore development team with the required expertise and talent.

 

demand for software engineers in the US

The United States is a good example of how quickly the demand for software engineers is growing. Predictions are that this trend will strengthen globally as well. / source: economicmodeling.com

 

Some Main Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Cost-Effective

This is one of the main reasons why companies have started choosing the staff augmentation model. Many companies face issues with finding knowledgeable professionals, especially in countries where the standard of living is exceptionally high. It amplifies taxes, health insurance, and various other costs.

Staff augmentation will allow you to hire a team from another country, helping you cut those expenses. Also, since these services will lead you to a talented and highly skilled team of professionals, you will end up saving any ongoing training costs.

Easy Access to Larger Talents

Only relying on your in-house team is not enough in today’s era of the business world. Having augmented staff in your team will make sure that your work is not hampered. It will allow your business to hire a highly skilled and talented team of professional people who will be working dedicatedly on your project.

Efficient Operations

Small businesses and startups have to spend high operating costs that earn them a minimum return on investment. With staff augmentation, companies get the freedom to avail flexible working platforms, hiring professionals and teams of professionals. A business that opts for staff augmentation experiences reduced costs in operations and infrastructure.

We observe that the demand for the Staff Augmentation model is growing every year. The variety of technologies and industries for which specialists are needed is also expanding. Therefore, our priority is always to match the candidate not only to the language or framework but also to the industry or specificity of a particular company. In this way, all sides win – the Service Provider, the Customer, and the Employee. Paul Jackowski CEO, ASPER BROTHERS

What to NOT WORRY ABOUT as a Staff Augmentation Client?

Hiring a staff augmentation service is becoming a common model these days. It is an extremely helpful model that allows companies to hire the best talent to work on their project. What employee-related tasks and responsibilities does this staffing model avoid?

Training Costs and Recruitment Effort

When you hire a full-time employee for a specific skill set, the process can be daunting, time-consuming, and expensive as well. Staff augmentation lets you rethink the whole scenario and allows you to invest money into important areas or helps you save more.
Any money and efforts involved in the recruitment tools, for example, ATS, sourcing, LinkedIn packages, costs of advertisements, paperwork, skills, and resources for technical assessment, further training, and others, are reduced.

Also, the staff augmentation company will take care of the HR, payrolls, accounting, office management, and legal compliance of the augmented staff.

Hiring Procedure of New Employee and the Associated Formalities

Legal aspects are part of hiring an employee, no matter in which country you are located. To arrange a new team, you will need office space, hire an HR, an accountant, and a lawyer, take care of taxes, etc. With staff augmentation, all these things are handled by the managed services. You can expand your business on a whim and add more members to your teams flexibly.

Costs Related to Employee Training and Development Courses

When you hire a full-time employee in your software development team, you would have to invest in training and development courses to make sure that their knowledge is updated as per the market trends. But, with a staff augmentation company, this cost is taken care of by the hiring company, which reduces further costs for you.

 

Staff_Augmentation

Staff Augmentation has many benefits. However, it is worth remembering that the success of the project also depends on how we integrate the new employee into the team. / source: usmsystems.com

 

Responsibility of The Project on The Client-Side

When you take the help of staff augmentation managed services for your software development company, there are certain things that you and your business will have to take care of.

On-boarding and Kick-off

You will have to take care of introducing the new candidate to your existing team. Making them an integral part of the project and taking care explaining to them the company’s internal processes and the company culture will be your responsibility.

Management Capability

Your project manager, managing director, and other team members should be prepared to manage more people. Though the talent of the augmentation staff team will be easier to run with little guidance and training, you will still need the capacity to manage additional staff.

Backend, full-stack, and frontend engineers still saw the highest demand, making up more than half of all interview requests for software engineers.

source: hired.com

Determining The Requirements:

You will have to determine the exact profile requirements of the candidate that you are looking for for your project. A staff augmentation team already has a talent pool, but it will be your responsibility to determine what technical knowledge is required to run your project.

Managing Product Development

Team augmentation is not responsible for the deliverables of the project, so you as a client will be in charge of managing the project and the development team in the context of product development.

 

Best Practices to Optimize Cooperation in Staff Augmentation Model

Staff augmentation is becoming as popular amongst companies as the outsourcing model. Yet, for utilizing the maximum benefits from this collaboration model, there are some guidelines that the core business team can follow:

  • When you are hiring a developer for your team, focus on communication skills as well as on their technical knowledge. Check if they culturally fit with your local team. The success of the project depends widely on the communication between the local team and the consulting firm.
  • Ask the management of the staff augmentation team to assign a dedicated person for your long-term projects. In this way, your core business team will have to contact just one dedicated person.
  • Make sure that your in-house team is ready with the strategy and has the competencies to effectively maintain a team of developers. For example, if your team lacks technical talent, you must have an appropriate structure in your team. Usually, a staff augmentation team has a broad range of talent available to hire and includes an in-house manager and developer, but it all depends on the stage of product development and the project.
  • Staff augmentation does not mean that you can outsource complete projects. You must have the demand to fit the additional team members into existing teams, and at the same time, you must give the development process the right direction, support, and flow.
  • If your project is growing or you need vendor services for other projects, you should contact the outsourcing team as soon as possible. It will allow the recruiter from the vendor side to provide you with services promptly.
  • Ensure that you always have knowledge transfer within the projects. When you take help from an external provider, you will often deal with new developers. Creating support documentation and collecting more information and materials about the different phases of the projects will help you with onboarding new employees.
  • If you are hiring more than one developer for your company, it will be best if you focus on having DevOps in-house and in the same office. It will increase productivity and security when your site employee is taking care of deployments, infrastructure, etc.

Summary

You can not deny the benefits that come with the staff augmentation methodology. It has become one of the most effective ways to deal with IT talent shortage, especially when the project is short and your business wants ultra-fast productivity and results while keeping the cost to a minimum.

However, the benefits of these augmented teams tend to fade away with longer projects. Outsourcing complex and longer projects will be more beneficial and effective when the software team works remotely.

Nevertheless, some companies specialize in their work and are setting examples for their clients. And in some cases, it is perfect to hire an augment team to work on a project. It is always true, and there are proven examples that long-term partnership always works cost-effectively and makes projects less stressful.

By outsourcing the creation, designing, and maintenance of your software project, you can focus more on your core business and achieve better results.

 

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Mike Jackowski

Operating Brother

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