How to Choose IT Staff Augmentation Services in 2024

According to Bloomberg, nearly 54% of businesses worldwide are experiencing talent shortages. Several projects go through fluctuating needs and demands for a cost-effective solution. Businesses are trying to strike the right balance between productivity and profitability, leading to the demand for staff augmentation.

IT staff augmentation refers to the strategy utilized by technology companies to bring in technology experts like software engineers, etc for specific work or as an add-on to the internal team.

Today, we will understand IT staff augmentation and why companies should apply it in their projects or daily operations.

What is Staff Augmentation?

Let us first understand staff augmentation in the simplest way. Staff augmentation is an outsourcing technique that enables the hiring and managing of an augmented team. To explain, the in-house team is extended with external resources for projects in staff augmentation. 

For example, you are planning to develop a web application and need four developers for the task, while your existing staff has only two. Finding two more developers with the required expertise and technology stack may take a lot of time, delaying the project’s development and going to market.

By opting for staff augmentation, you can get the developers added to the team within 1-3 weeks, delivering quicker project results and revenue for the business. Therefore, a business maturity in staff augmentation can successfully deliver more releases.

The businesses can hire individuals according to the specific needs of the project. The candidates are hired as a temporary workforce to fill the gap. The primary advantage of staff augmentation is that the individuals are tapped and paid as the need arises.

Types of IT Staff Augmentation Model

IT staff augmentation can be arranged in different ways depending on the need, skill, longevity, and complexity of the work. Here are the most popular types of IT staff augmentation models.

B-O-T Model

The B-O-T (build-operate-transfer) model is a form of an integrated partnership that combines design and construction responsibilities with operations and maintenance. It allows you to build an offshore team in the ‘build’ stage and put them to the test during the ‘operate’ stage.

The BOT model gives an advantage of trying before you invest. It provides an ability to scale faster and access the latest technologies.

Team Augmentation

Team augmentation is a plug-and-play engagement model that allows you to hire talents that create value from day one. It analyzes the client’s needs and provides expertise with the apt use of various development tools.

Team augmentation leverages the benefits of easy hiring, trial tasks, face-to-face interviews, and time sheets. It implements highly evolved practices and advanced tools to improve the client’s IT efficiency.

Fixed Scope Augmentation

As the name suggests, this model means that the scope is decided at the start of the project. The timeline and pricing factors are predefined for both parties. The fixed costs imply changes in the project after the agreement. This model requires a comprehensive plan for the project. Fixed scope augmentation is preferred for short-term projects.

Why are IT Staff Augmentation Services Popular?

There are several reasons why IT staff augmentation services are gaining popularity these days. The staff augmentation services provide you with a quick and easy solution to scale the IT needs of the company. It enables companies to keep up with the demand and reduce project costs.

The IT staff augmentation allows companies to easily access the technical expertise and skills that may not be available in-house. Bringing an augmented team can help fulfill day-to-day needs or any specialized requirements.

Augmented services can help you tackle a wide range of staffing issues in the company. Companies choose IT staff augmentation mainly because of increased efficiency, hiring flexibility, and reduced operational costs.

The entire IT staff augmentation model is different from the traditional hiring processes. It saves time and money needed in the recruitment process. As a result, you don’t have to struggle with lengthy hiring processes.

Explore 7 Key Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation

1. Cost- Efficiency

Staff augmentation enables you to use the skills on the projects without going through the long hiring process. This means you can access the expertise and skilled professionals right away. Additionally, there is no need to invest in other resources such as office space or equipment., which helps cut costs. 

The staff augmentation allows you to pay for the services as per need This way; the company can avoid spending too much money and time upfront and focus on core activities. 

2. Access to the Larger Talent Pool

The staff augmentation offers access to a larger talent pool. It is often observed that permanent hiring restricts a firm’s ability to leverage the available talent in the market. It allows businesses to hire professionals with ready skills, guaranteeing maximum results. 

As staff augmentation can be domain-centric, it can provide unique and beneficial talent skills suited for the job. 

3. Better Flexibility

IT staff augmentation gives the advantage of the flexibility to scale up your existing operations. Companies can utilize the benefit of staff augmentation to react to the competition and keep up with the market demand. It’s easy to shift the augmented staff from one project to another compared to permanent employees. 

4. Expansion and Adaptation

The staff augmentation allows the business to expand its operations on a trial basis without investing in any workforce. It allows businesses to evaluate the team member’s ability for the project.

In addition to the expansion, it offers the advantage of adapting to the changing market conditions. Many companies cannot respond to such transformation. The staff augmentation allows them to react to rapid changes and fulfill new demands. 

5. Access to New and Contemporary Opinions

Having a fixed employee network often results in stagnant ideas or opinions for the development of a business. The upcoming demands may expect innovative means to deliver the results and solutions. 

Staff augmentation offers engagement with a diverse set of professionals joining from different backgrounds, geography and culture. This diversity can be leveraged to find new ideas and create opportunities to develop the processes and deliver quality results.

6. Risk Reduction

Staff augmentation and project outsourcing are effective methods to mitigate the risks associated with hiring full-time employees. When you hire temporary staff, it entails a smaller commitment than bringing in permanent in-house employees.

Additionally, by partnering with an external company for software development, you share the risks and challenges, and your partner collaborates with you on the project.

7. Facilitating Effective Collaboration

How can you ensure that the new team members brought in by your partner through staff augmentation work well with your internal team? When you are still in the process of deciding on staff augmentation services, it’s important to ask about their daily and emergency communication with partners.

Once you have gathered information on how the team communicates and collaborates, you can create a plan to integrate the new members into your internal team smoothly.

Some Possible Challenges When Utilizing Staff Augmentation

Nowadays, businesses find it extremely profitable to augment their team with offshore and nearshore IT, professionals. But with advantages come certain challenges while opting for staff augmentation.

The challenges can act as a hindrance in the development of the project, resulting in losses. We have addressed some common challenges businesses face while implementing IT staff augmentation.

Communication and Management

Communication and management are the keys for every business to run smoothly. Similarly, every project needs constant communication with the remote team to ensure quality service.

Businesses face the problem of poor communications with their remote workforce through IT staff augmentation can find Staff augmentation a big disadvantage. Poor communication leads to failure. It’s important to connect with teams, set up a cadence, and react quickly, especially when there are bottlenecks.

Finding the Right Person for the Job

Today finding talent has become a pressing challenge for many organizations. Finding the right IT professionals with the necessary skill set for the project is difficult.

There is often a skill gap experienced in the team to get the job done. This is because most teams don’t update their skills. It acts as a challenge to find the right person to deliver with zero hiccups in the process.

Distinct Expectations

Every team member puts a lot of effort into any product. But all that work can go in vain if the expectations of both parties are not fulfilled.

If staffing partners and internal employees understand the project in different contexts, the final result is not that efficient.

Related read: How To Define The Project Scope The Foolproof Way

Inconsistent Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge transfer is considered the most important part of every project development process. Without a predetermined plan for transferring knowledge, businesses can risk organizational waste.

If businesses face inconsistent knowledge transfer problems, then there would be a waste of time, effort, and investments. 

Related read: 6 Things You Must Know Before Changing Developers

5 Best Practices for IT Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation has proved to be a game changer for many businesses. However, to make the staff augmentation yield a greater return on investment, it is crucial to follow some best augmentation practices:

Set the Expectations from the Start

As discussed above, businesses face the common challenge of not clearly understanding what is expected. Such challenges can lead to poor results for the project development. Therefore it is important to set the expectations right from the beginning. 

Create a communication channel where ideas can be shared, progress reviews can be done, and correct measures can be taken around staff augmentation. A process is being followed to set the expectation. 

1. Set expectations in clear language 
2. Provide the reason behind the expectation
3. Communicate the expectations for each job role 

Set Up Communication Channels and Etiquette

Poor communication can be a barrier to the business opting for staff augmentation. If there is no proper communication, there will be no successful completion of the task and a lack of clarity in every stage of project development.

Therefore, having solid communication is necessary from the beginning. This involves creating a robust communication channel. Staff augmentation also requires appropriate tools to deliver the expected results. Some of the much-needed tools are: 

• Task management tools: Trella, Jira, Microsoft planner 
• Messenger tools: Google Chat, Telegram, Slack 
• Video conferencing tools- Zoom, Slack, Google Meet
• Continuous integration tool: TeamCity, CircleCi 
• Source code repository: Github, Bitbucket

Related read: 10 Tips To Deal With Different Time Zones And Communication

Establish Reporting Matrix

A common challenge faced in outsourcing is things get lost from the plan. There should be a proper mechanism through which things can work throughout the plan. A reporting or an escalation matrix can take care of such tasks easily.

A reporting matrix is an organizational structure where reports are presented to the manager, while the escalation matrix is the road map created to deliver efficient results. 

Establishing a reporting matrix ensures that the business goals are defined and reported. 

Standardize Performance Measurement

As staff augmentation involves the third party involved in the day-to-day business activities, businesses can face several difficulties. The external personnel may not be as committed as you are, or it becomes difficult to measure the third-party activities with a remote workforce. 

Under such circumstances, setting up a performance measurement process is necessary. The process will identify how and in what terms the performance will be measured for the augmented workforce. It will ensure to check on deliverable terms agreed to by the vendors and the individual personnel. 

Related read: Setting Up KPIs Of A Development Project

Understand the Cost Associated with Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation is considered one of the cost-controlling strategies in businesses. But if not done with proper understanding can turn out to be an expensive solution.

It’s important to understand the factors and nature of staff augmentation. Prepare a list of the number of employees augmented with their hourly rates. This draws a clear picture of your total project costs. 

Understanding breakdowns of costs will help you make better decisions for the project. Staff augmentation can be beneficial for various reasons, but it isn’t suitable for every company. It’s best to use staff augmentation when you need highly talented employees quickly but don’t have enough resources to spend.