It has nearly become a non-negotiable for businesses to maintain competitiveness consistently in this era of cutting-edge technology and quick evolution. The hard-to-accept reality of modern digital rivalry is that for firms to succeed, elite development teams are a need. Therefore, since hiring for IT positions is time-consuming and expensive, how can you reliably have a development team with the proper makeup and size to implement new technologies and handle contemporary challenges? Staff augmentation is the solution to this problem.
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What is staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation is a collaboration approach in which a corporation augments its in-house staff by temporarily engaging one or more outsourcing IT specialists. Augmented specialists frequently work as part of an in-house team and collaborate with company employees for a limited period of time.
>> Learn more: Dedicated Development Team
3 types of staff augmentation
| Commodity | You need dependable people to complete a task, but they do not need a specific skill set. | Basic factory or warehouse jobs, retail, events, and manual labor |
| Skill-based | Certain abilities are required (typing, spreadsheet use, multilingualism), but the proportional amount of expertise is not important. | Clerical jobs, data entry, transcription, and basic copywriting |
| Highly-Skilled | You need more sophisticated talents, which can only be acquired by extensive training and experience. Skill level is also crucial. | Contract law, software engineering, and brand design |
How Does Staff Augmentation Work?
The following is how the staff augmentation process works:
- Initial contact – To begin this technical process, clients contact staff augmentation service firms to expand their in-house employees. Managers gather and analyze requests. They then plan another call with the customer to go over the details (such as required dev s qualification or what is a staff augmentation contract, etc.)
- Choosing developers — When the needs are specific, the agency selects professionals with the necessary skill set. Their resumes are forwarded to the client for consideration.
- Interview – After the customer approves the CVs, the selected specialists must pass a technical interview to demonstrate their abilities. Interviews are sometimes broken into two stages: one with the CTO and one with the CEO or product owners.
- Contract signing – If all goes well, the agency will sign a contract and include the selected developers in the project.
Benefits and Disadvantages of staff augmentation model
Benefits
The benefits of the resource staff augmentation model range from the obvious ones, including not having to pay for office space or taxes, to quicker and considerably more affordable recruiting. Let’s examine further advantages.
1. Flexibility
With team augmentation, you can recruit as many IT specialists as you need, and you can easily scale the augmented team up or down. You might begin with two iOS developers, two QA engineers, and a UI/UX designer, but once that is done, you will only work with iOS or Android developers. Budgeting options for resource augmentation include setting up a payment schedule (weekly or monthly), hourly rates, and other details (such sick days or vacations) with the enhanced vendor.
2. Direct Interaction
The vendor will handle every aspect if you outsource web development or custom software development. If you decide to use staff augmentation, however, corporate project management solutions will allow you to manually allocate jobs, schedule sprints, and thoroughly oversee the procedure. Developers will report to you directly and keep in constant communication.
3. Extremely productive
The staff augmentation strategy stands out for its high productivity, which indicates that the team is entirely committed to your project and has their full attention. Personnel augmentation can assist your business become more productive when it counts the most, as opposed to being pulled in numerous areas like normal staff typically are. As a result, they would be more productive than an outsourcing staff that can handle multiple tasks at once.
4. Growth and adaptability
The ability to be flexible in ways that having a full-time workforce does not is one of the most obvious advantages of staff augmentation. Without committing to a full-time workforce and running the risk of failure or investment loss, flexible employment enables businesses to test out new operations. By enabling them to recruit staff for specific projects in order to gauge their market viability, team augmentation services give expanding enterprises more options.
5. Reasonable Prices
We are all aware of the high expense of hiring full-time employees. Organizations also need particular skill sets and types of labor to operate at their best. Consider hiring an augmented team if hiring full-time professionals is outside of your goals and budgeted expenses. The price of staff augmentation services is determined by hourly rates, which also cover office rent, hardware, software, and training costs. For all of that, their cost is often less than that of internal development services.
Disadvantages
1. Time and language constraints
The language barrier is the first and most typical staff augmentation example of difficulty that clients may have. The uneven quality of English can lead to misconceptions during the development workflow. However, you can prevent this issue by determining the vendor’s English proficiency on your own, communicating with a corporate representative, or conversing with each employee.
The time zone problem is another issue to be resolved. It can also be managed by creating an appropriate meeting schedule that enables you to appropriately set up communication. The meaning of resource and staff augmentation will be more valuable in this way.
2. Quality control
The work of a subpar developer can result in project delays, cost overruns, and serious security threats for the user. This issue is common among managers that put cost savings before other considerations, but there are easy ways to prevent it. Companies can examine and gather feedback from prior clients to determine whether their engineering team is competent and capable of executing the work that has been assigned to them. To best meet the needs for staff augmentation, it should be done.
3. Security issues
Since the staff augmentation business model involves involving a third party and integrating them into internal operations, security is a major problem. Security and privacy for clients and projects are essential and cannot be compromised.
In order to fully ensure security, staff augmentation organizations must follow all rules for obtaining NDAs signed after hiring the augmented employees. This includes conducting regular security audits to address the issue of security threats and dangers.
4. Technical proficiency
The haste with which you hire additional specialists could end up being your downfall when you find that the improved team performance falls short of your expectations. You can only succeed with a comprehensive selection process, which includes looking carefully at the candidate’s portfolio and paying attention to their experience in the field you’re interested in.
When should you use Staff Augmentation Services?
The use of staff augmentation is sometimes seen to be suitable by organizations for a variety of reasons. They include, among others:
- Strategic: Using flexible labor strategically can help you gain a competitive edge. For example, you could make your team more adaptable or speed up the time it takes to complete a project.
- Specialized skills: Staff augmentation can be employed when you only require specialized abilities for a short period of time, such as tech setup, brand and logo creation, or facility setup.
- Bridge to hire: In situations which you are entering a new industry or launching a new location, you can employ staff augmentation to fill capacity while you build a permanent workforce.
- Greater capacity: Staff augmentation can be utilized to address a brief requirement for more regular work, such as in seasonal businesses, times of demand spikes, when output is being expanded, or when working on a specific project.
6 types of Staff Augmentation Services
Traditional Staffing Providers
- DESCRIPTION: Traditional providers of temporary labor
- TALENT TYPES: Skill-Based Commodity
- BEST FOR: Non-critical projects where a high level of skill is not required
- STRENGTHS: Flexibility
- CHALLENGES: Finding highly-skilled talent can be difficult
Master Vendor Staffing Providers
- DESCRIPTION: Large-scale hiring initiatives handled by a single vendor
- TALENT TYPES: Commodity
- BEST FOR: Highly-commoditized labor needs where low cost and scale are most important
- STRENGTHS: Low Cost Scale
- CHALLENGES: Highly commoditized, talent quality can be inconsistent
Specialized/Boutique Staffing & Consulting Firms
- DESCRIPTION: Smaller firms or agencies that focus on specialized, highly-skilled talent.
- TALENT TYPES: Skill-Based/Highly-Skilled
- BEST FOR: When you need specialized skill sets and highly skilled talent.
- STRENGTHS: Quality
- CHALLENGES: Generally costly, with high overhead
Gig Platforms
- DESCRIPTION: Online platforms that provide instant access to independent workers
- TALENT TYPES: Commodity/Skill-Based
- BEST FOR: Task-based needs for more commoditized skillsets
- STRENGTHS: Speed & Flexibility
- CHALLENGES: Large marketplaces make it difficult to distinguish between candidates, talent is generally geographically distributed
On-Demand Talent Platforms
- DESCRIPTION: Online platforms that provide access to curated, highly-skilled talent
- TALENT TYPES: Highly-Skilled
- BEST FOR: Highly-skilled talent deployed quickly
- STRENGTHS: Speed & Flexibility & Quality
- CHALLENGES: Talent is generally geographically distributed (remote)
Direct Independent Relationships
- DESCRIPTION: Independent contractors engaged directly by organizations
- TALENT TYPES: Skill-Based/Highly Skilled
- BEST FOR: Needs that can be filled by known professionals
- STRENGTHS: Quality & Low Overhead
- CHALLENGES: It is tough to discover trustworthy people, and it is even more difficult to maintain an active relationship.
As a result, staff augmentation can be a priceless remedy for all the difficulties associated with hiring workers because it allows you to bring on effective talent without making a long-term commitment. You can keep ahead of the game by outsourcing software development to hire adaptable remote workers without having to worry about paperwork or other time-consuming procedures, while also having more influence over your projects.
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