When striving to keep up with the ever-changing technological advances in the market, organizations search for opportunities to increase the quality of services without sacrificing the quality of the product. In the IT domain, much attention is paid to hiring the right qualified candidates and engineers. Therefore, there is an increasing demand to verify a provider’s experience with staff augmentation. Since there are multiple approaches to building your team, let’s dive deep into the topic of Staff Augmentation. We will outline its concept, benefits and drawbacks.
The Staff Augmentation Option
The concept of staff augmentation is relatively new and unique to the software industry. Staff augmentation involves the temporary utilization of independent professionals with a specific skill to supplement an existing team of developers. In contrast to outsourced staff, the augmented resources join the project and directly operate with your in-house core employees. Think of how personal this becomes in the work environment. It is for this reason that Wonderment Apps believes in the boutique experience, hands-on, consultative and accessible.
Generally, IT staff augmentation services speed up the recruiting process, find the world’s best experts for hard-to-fill positions, boost project development, increase team efficiency and productivity.
Reasons to Use Staff Augmentation Model
Before selecting staff augmentation as the model to implement, clients should take into account all the Pros and Cons for their unique needs.
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Pros |
Cons |
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Flexible talent management |
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Individual experts are more flexible when integrating into your in-house team. This benefit significantly:
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Not all augmented experts are ready for a quick jump into the project specifications and the heavy workload at once. Thus, depending on the complexity of the project, clients should always be mindful to establish reasonable milestones with an augmented staff to build a trustworthy relationship and balance between the teams. |
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Unique expertise |
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| Hiring outside developers allows a company to augment a person with rare expertise on a per-project/part-time basis hassle-free to perfectly fill project requirements and reduce the time spent on recruiting. | Staff Augmentation is not a solution applicable to long-term projects and situations when you need to hire a specialist permanently. |
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Quick adaptability |
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Staff augmentation has already proven its high adaptability level during the initial uncertainty period. Now, businesses are open to hiring variable talents on-demand to:
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The involvement of an outside workforce increases your dependence on third-party organizations providing recruiting services. Besides, Project Managers are under pressure as they must ensure every new employee adheres to requirements and stays within the expectations of the product development. |
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Workflow & progress transparency |
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| When engaging the independent talent, you avoid burdensome onboarding and administrative procedures since the focus lays on time and process optimization. Once the augmented developer enters an agreement and dives into the established process, they are expected to fully align with the project workload and overall development progress. | Recruiting numerous individual experts may lead to misunderstandings and a loss of key company and project priorities as employees may share different values and preach conflicting approaches. Therefore, clients should have strong Project Managers to coordinate the process and a team. |
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Cost-efficiency |
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| The staff augmentation process is considered more cost-saving compared with other hiring models. Firstly, you have the opportunity to hire the professional no matter their location. For instance, if new employees practice remote work, you could save on renting office workstations and equipment.
Secondly, you can turn to staff augmentation at the project outset or as the project evolves and engage experts as a trial run before proceeding with hiring the full-time team. |
One of the serious drawbacks of staff augmentation is hiring onsite employees who will require the space/software/hardware to perform their work. This will substantially add to the budget.
Another point is that the client could pay extra money to the third-party organization in charge of staff hiring. Sometimes, these rates overcome the generally accepted ranges for full-time employment. |
Implementing Staff Augmentation Into Your Project
Over the past decade, staff augmentation as a common outsourcing strategy has attracted much attention. Proving the ability to quickly supplement the existing team to meet IT needs, staff augmentation services enable organizations to link both full-time and remote teams together. To implement and keep the staff augmentation process running smoothly, follow the steps suggested below:
- Determine the project team’s gaps and define their needs.
- Analyze the market of companies that provide staff augmentation services. Select up to 5 reputable organizations.
- Study their industry reputation and references, look into their expertise and portfolio, research their recruitment process, and more.
- Schedule a call, conduct negotiations, and discuss project details.
- Conclude a cooperation agreement.
- Provide exhaustive job role descriptions for potential candidates in order to clarify a prospect’s terms of cooperation. Additionally, define distinct project goals and expectations.
- Interview the candidate and choose the best applicant. Do not settle!
- Execute a contract with the augmented staff employee and if needed, don’t forget the NDA.
- Introduce recently hired staff to the team and organize training sessions.
- Establish a clear line of communication to synchronize team efforts on the project.
Effective execution of these points will transform the development approach, add to the project success, and push team productivity.
IT staff augmentation has become a perfect solution for organizations that aim to encourage a global talent pool, scale the team, reduce costs, as well as manage resources for a fast-paced project. The staff augmentation model can efficiently solve numerous present-day needs of an enterprise. However, before reaping all the benefits offered by the staff augmentation approach, you should discern all the strengths and weaknesses.
Once ready, begin the personalized, consultative, approach to discover the range of opportunities and services we offer. You will learn how the Wonderment Apps approach considers every nuance and goal you may have.