Staff augmentation is a strategic approach to enhance your software development capabilities. IT staff augmentation services provide access to skilled professionals, allowing you to scale your team efficiently and meet project deadlines. Read on to discover the benefits of this talent augmentation model and how it can transform your business.

What is IT Staff Augmentation, what it means for your business, and how it can work for you

IT staff augmentation is the strategic integration of external IT professionals into your existing development team. This allows you to access specialized skills and expertise on-demand, empowering you to:

Scale your team
Quickly add qualified personnel to meet specific project requirements or address talent shortages.
Embrace niche expertise
Access specialized skills like cloud architects, cybersecurity experts, or UI/UX designers for specific project needs.
Optimize costs
Save on recruitment, training, and benefits compared to full-time hiring.
Increase agility
Respond swiftly to changing market demands and technological advancements.

IT staff augmentation is a powerful strategy to make your software development acquire speed, flexibility, and low-cost scalability without losing code quality. Using the resource augmentation for hiring and scaling your software development team, you can get in-house and distributed talents all together to meet specific business objectives.

The main advantage is combining the reliability of a full-time workforce with the flexibility of project outsourcing. Also, you can reduce time and money spent on recruitment, as the responsibility of vetting and recruiting talents lies with staff augmentation companies.

Once finding IT architects, DevOps specialists, software engineers, and others becomes an exclusive task of the staff augmentation services outsourced, your role will be staying in control of managing the project and adjusting your team size and expertise exactly to the needs of your project.

But, what is IT staff augmentation? How does it work? If you would like to understand team augmentation and how it can take your business to the next level, keep reading this page.

6 types of Staff Augmentation

  1. Staff Augmentation: All types of projects and product development
  2. Boutique Agency: Searching rare skill sets and filling exclusive needs
  3. Master vendor staff: Addressing quick needs at low costs, good for bulk hiring
  4. Gig platform: Quick hires for short tasksIndependent contractorClear scope and need to terminate contracts easily

Why Use Staff Augmentation in Software Companies?

IT Staff augmentation is an outsourcing engagement model that aims to quickly have a team available for a project according to the anticipated needs. Let’s say, it’s a new look at the old formula.

In this model, companies count on the help of outsourcing staff augmentation services to cover skill gaps after evaluating the existing staff and identifying a lack of experience to fill.

Therefore, the main advantage of IT Staff augmentation is to be more assertive in the talent hiring and retention process. Once the IT staff augmentation companies provide the client’s workforce with skilled talents and dedicated specialists that will match specific product development needs, you reduce the risks of outsourcing.

Furthermore, staff augmentation is used by IT Managers and Tech Leaders globally to accelerate your hiring process and make companies grow faster. In 2017, the outsourcing market reached $88.9 billion worldwide, according to Deloitte.

Not only because it’s considered less expensive to outsource: most often companies choose to outsource to focus on their core business activities, solve capacity issues, and enhance service quality.

  • 59% of companies outsource to reduce or control costs.
  • 57% do it to focus on business objectives.
  • 47% to solve capacity issues.
  • 31% to improve service quality
  • 28% to take help from talented professionals
  • 17% to manage their business environment

Cost, enabling core business functions, and solving capacity issues are primary drivers of outsourcing.

Cost, enabling core business functions, and solving capacity issues are primary drivers of outsourcing. Source: CMA Group

The Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation: A Deep Dive

Beyond the initial advantages, staff augmentation offers a multitude of benefits for your development process:

Faster Time-to-Market
Onboard pre-vetted professionals, eliminating lengthy recruitment cycles and accelerating project completion.
Enhanced Innovation
Integrate diverse skillsets and fresh perspectives into your team, fostering a creative environment.
Improved Project Management
Augmented teams alleviate workload from core team members, allowing for better project planning and execution.
Reduced Risk
Mitigate the risks associated with talent gaps and project delays by accessing a wider range of qualified professionals.
Improved Team Morale
Supplementing your team with the right talent reduces stress and burnout, leading to a more productive and motivated team.

How to Implement a Successful IT Staff Augmentation Strategy

IT Staff Augmentation is a custom and personalized model of outsourcing talents, according to skills and roles. Using Design as an example, the teams may be formed of Strategist Designers, or Product, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Research and Service Designers. Not to mention the fields of expertise that blend with Technology, like Design Ops and Design System specialists.

To truly leverage the power of staff augmentation, a well-defined strategy is key. Here’s a step-by-step approach:

  1. Define Your Needs: Clearly identify project requirements, the specific skillsets required, and the duration of the augmentation.
  2. Partner with a Reputable Provider: Choose a staffing agency with a proven track record of success in IT recruitment and experience in understanding your specific needs.
  3. Seamless Integration: Facilitate clear communication and ensure new team members are well-versed in your development tools and methodologies.
  4. Ongoing Management: Maintain open communication with both your internal team and the augmentation partner to address any concerns and ensure project alignment.
  5. Performance Measurement: Establish clear metrics to track the impact of staff augmentation on project progress and team performance.

In practice, there are some specific steps for each stakeholder to follow:

IT staff augmentation companies
  • Creating the map of required skills, qualifications, years of expertise, and the number of developers and engineers that your product needs.
  • Starting the search process, findind and reviewing suitable talents
  • Interviewing and curating candidates to ensure culture and technical qualification
IT Managers or Tech Leaders
  • Creating and monitoring onboarding and integration of new team members
  • Keep supporting and nurturing talent (even after the integration process).
  • Collecting feedback and building strong relationships with them is crucial for effective cooperation.

How long does Staff Augmentation last?

Short term Staff Augmentation: it can be adopted during periods of increased demand for employees or when in-house teams are unavailable for a certain period.

Long term Staff Augmentation: it’s more suitable for big projects filling a skill gap, cutting operational costs, or not preferring in-house hiring processes.

Why use IT staff augmentation instead of other alternatives?

Staff Augmentation

Onshore outsourcing

Offshore outsourcing
Cost-efficiency  

High quality level team nearshore without spending with recruiting and training, employee benefits, taxes etc.

 Costs are higher than Staff Augmentation because of employee benefits, taxes etc. Cheaper options, but chances are you loose in communication because of the large time zone difference.
Code quality High High Table
Bureaucracy x Flexibility Totally flexible, change team size whenever you need. Not flexible – full liability. Not flexible because of large timezone differences and local legislation.
Cultural fit High High Low

Is IT Staff Augmentation really a good Idea?

There are many reasons to adopt IT Staff Augmentation as your strategy to scale a high-performance team.

Money savings, including hidden costs

Because of the high demand in the US, hiring high-level software engineers is very costly. According to Indeed, the average salary for a software engineer is about $110k per year in the United States, plus a $4k cash bonus per year.

In addition to the high salaries, there are more hidden costs such as health insurance, ongoing training, or even hiring a contractor and spending goes beyond hourly fees – the majority of staffing agencies charge 15%-25% off each new hire’s annual remuneration as their commission fee – which can mean a substantial increase in your budget.

On the other hand, using an IT Staff Augmentation service as an outsourcing partner, you’ll have Hiring Process Outsourcing (HPO) and HR Process Outsourcing (HRO) both included in just one fee. This will help you to eliminate the long process of hiring someone for a reasonable cost-effective.

Increase growth speed by shortening months of recruitment work

Instead of spending weeks or months, in the Staff Augmentation model you’ll be able to meet aggressive project deadlines. Once the Staff Augmentation Company is completely focused on sourcing, recruiting, and hiring processes, you can count on high-level engineers and developers in a matter of days, temporarily or permanently.

The only part of the recruitment process which remains your responsibility is the final interviewing and selection. So, choose a nimble, effective, and customer-centric partner that brings results at the speed your business demands.

More assertive because of Custom Recruitment Model

Once the Staff Augmentation service is focused on finding engineers and developers with specific qualifications and skills, you’ll have direct access to the needed specialists which you may not always find in your city, region, or country.

Here is another thing: when looking for your Staff Augmentation service prefer choosing a partner that works nearshore.

IT Staff augmentation roles and responsibilities

IT Staff augmentation roles and responsibilities

IT Staff augmentation roles and responsibilities

Working with teams located in geographical proximity to your country like South America – chances are you’ll have senior specialists available, taking less time to complete tasks and consequently increasing the quality of your product. You may want to check our Understanding Onshore, Nearshore, and Offshore Differences article too, for more depth.

Here is a short list of benefits for choosing a nearshore team:  

  • Get face-to-face with your team, supported by shorter flight times when compared to offshore
  • Maintain your sanity (and sleeping nights) by not working on an odd schedule because of bizarre time zones
  • Keep intellectual property laws similar to the US
  • Not losing a higher level of engagement (thanks to similar culture)
  • Improve quality software development and collaboration
  • Reduce costs with the US dev team and increase ROI

By involving staffing augmentation, you get three more developers on your team within 1-3 weeks, achieving quicker software product completion and faster market launch.

Sometimes mixing in-house engineers, staff augmentation, and project outsourcing will be the best choice for you. The truth is that there is no 100% answer for it. Anyway, cost-benefit and quality will always be the deciding factor at the forefront.

there are many benefits to staff augmentation

There are many benefits to staff augmentation

Questions you should ask a Staff Augmentation Firm before hiring

When you invest the money of your company in Staff Augmentation service, nothing is better than asking everything possible. The best outcomes depend on a good initial filter to find the one that best matches your cultural fit and has the expected ability to deliver top-notch talent.

Beyond that, you must ensure control and quality at the end of the day, so you need to reduce more risks you can. Despite you can’t monitor the entire project all the time, you can’t be in a leap of blind faith, so asking specific questions for your potential partner can help you to make the right decision.

  1. What does your vetting process look like?
  2. What specific contributions did your team members make to prior projects of your clients?
  3. Should I be able to interview the candidates for my project?
  4. Have you done any project similar to mine, regarding the Industry/Technology/Product Features?
  5. Where do you find your candidates and what do you look for when hiring new developers?
  6. Will the staff work full time on my project?
  7. How do you ensure software quality?
  8. Will I own the source code?
  9. Does my intellectual property remain safe?
  10. What collaboration tools do you use during the project?
  11. What steps do you take on to protect my company’s confidential information? Do you operate with Standardized Security Protocols?
  12. Are the hired engineers legally bound to me through co-employment? Are they treated in the same manner as my internal employees? 

When choosing your Staff Augmentation Service, you must focus on some important points, which are the Methodology, Service Level Agreement (SLA), Intellectual Property, and labor conditions.

Staff Augmentation Methodology

Finding a Staff Augmentation partner that understands your staffing needs is crucial to be successful in the hard task of managing distributed teams. And most important: this partner should have a good plan to support you in building a high-performance team. This includes:

  • Flexibility to adjust their overall staffing approach when necessary
  • Resourcefulness to attend to different skills needs from your Software Development Lifecycle such as front-end developers, product designers, web analytics developer, etc
  • Communication capacity of the talents hired by the partner with the rest of your distributed team
  • Great Background in Outsourcing with good work history, professional credentials, and a high level of previous clients satisfied
  • Smart processes and strategies to adept at executing staffing requests
  • Aligned location and time zone next to yours to facilitate meetings and alignments
  • Convenience and facility in communication, with tools simple-to-use and transparent processes to guarantee the efficiency in keeping all project stakeholders connected
  • Consistency in the schedules and a pool of exceptional engineering or creative design candidates.

A trustworthy vendor should be able to guarantee:

  • Quality and Expertise: Ensure the firm has a rigorous screening process to provide high-quality candidates with the necessary skills and experience. This includes technical assessments, interviews, and background checks.
  • Transparency: Look for a firm that offers clear and transparent communication about their processes, pricing, and timelines. They should be open about how they source and vet candidates, as well as how they handle any issues that may arise during the engagement.
  • Adaptability: The firm should adapt to your specific needs, whether that means quickly scaling up or down, adjusting team structures, or providing specialized skills. They should be flexible in terms of contract terms and willing to work with you to find the best solutions.
  • Cultural Fit: Ensure the firm understands and values your company culture. They should prioritize finding candidates who not only have the right technical skills but also fit well with your team’s values and work style.
  • Ongoing Support: A good staff augmentation firm will offer ongoing support throughout the engagement, including regular check-ins, performance reviews, and the ability to replace candidates if needed. They should be committed to your long-term success and willing to go the extra mile to ensure a smooth collaboration.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

An SLA is a critical component of any staff augmentation partnership. It outlines the expectations, responsibilities, and performance metrics for both parties. Here are some key elements to include in your SLA:

  • Scope of work: Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the augmented staff, including specific tasks, deliverables, and timelines.
  • Performance metrics: Establish measurable criteria for evaluating the performance of the augmented staff, such as productivity, quality of work, and adherence to deadlines.
  • Communication protocols: Set expectations for communication frequency, methods, and escalation procedures. This ensures that any issues are promptly addressed and resolved.
  • Confidentiality and data security: Specify how sensitive information and intellectual property will be protected, including any necessary non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and data security measures.
  • Termination clauses: Outline the conditions under which either party can terminate the agreement, including notice periods and any associated penalties or fees.

Intellectual Property and Labor Conditions

Protecting your intellectual property and ensuring fair labor conditions are paramount when working with an IT staff augmentation firm. Consider the following:

  • Intellectual Property Rights: Clearly define the ownership of any intellectual property created during the engagement. Ensure that all augmented staff sign agreements assigning any work they produce to your company.
  • Compliance with Labor Laws: Verify that the firm complies with all relevant labor laws and regulations, including those related to wages, working hours, and employee rights. This is especially important if the augmented staff will be working in different countries or regions.
  • Ethical Standards: Choose a firm that upholds high ethical standards in their recruitment and employment practices. This includes fair treatment of candidates, non-discriminatory hiring processes, and a commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Can IT Staff augmentation be a successful model for expanding your team?

Yes. It is not surprising that IT staff outsourcing is so popular and particularly successful among companies from the USA, Canada, and various European countries. More qualified staff provides the speed, professional acumen, and flexibility your team needs to scale quickly and complete development on time.

There are many advantages such as lower Development Costs, Less Recruitment Headache and Increased Output and Team Size, IT Staff Augmentation became prominent in America. This is the opportunity to choose the right (and qualified) candidates at lower costs and manage them with the methods you desire. When should you prefer IT Staff Augmentation instead of onshore models?

When there is a need to manage and staff required resources
If you need to establish a quick communication with your team regularly to manage the project you have to be well-connected to your remote team. Also, if you want to make sure that all staff required resources are being served and they feel like part of your organization, staff augmentation model it’ll be perfect because it integrates teams either locally or throughout the country. 

When you don’t have time or Human Resources to hire specialized engineers or developers to your team
You want to scale your team to have several programmers to develop another module of the products. You are developing high-end products together with a team. But your company is still struggling to hire the right talent, perhaps hiring some people that did not work out. Now you intend to hire from other countries/locations. Augmenting a staff is a perfect solution for the given scenario!
When you have a short budget and a challenging product or need to meet aggressive project deadlines
Staff augmentation is a pay-as-you-need model where it helps IT firms to cut expenses at various levels. As we already mentioned, you can pay workers only for the period they work. You don’t have to spend on recruiting and training, employee benefits, taxes, and more as workers are selected based on their expertise in a specific domain because all the hire is on the Staff Augmentation Firm payroll. This eliminates a lot of the cost and compliance barriers present in full-time employee hiring, especially if you hire often. 
When you want to reduce risks in outsourcing because of seniority of your team
Once you find a great Staff Augmentation Firm to support you in the hiring process, chances are you’ll successfully build a custom development team with value and multiple skills and reduce as close to zero as possible the risks. Otherwise, rely on the Staff Augmentation Firm support and consulting is a plus.

How do Staff Augmentation firms Help Companies Find the Right IT Staff?

Scaling your team successfully depends on finding the right Staff Augmentation service, which means a partner with a high-touch and consultative process of sourcing, vetting, and hiring talents.

Your Staff Augmentation firm needs to understand the roles required in your team, meet deadlines and increase your ROI. And how can this partner do this? Knowing the local market where the talents are, which means: good IT universities, specialized schools, competitors, what is fair compensation for the roles and what are the mandatory benefits you have to handle your employee.

Among other things, Staff Augmentation services can also help your business grow by:

  • Implementing new technologies that give you an edge over your competition.
  • Providing access to on-demand talent based on your project requirements.
  • Cutting down capital and operational expenses on IT.
  • Bypassing processes like personnel training and hardware purchasing.
  • Reducing development time so you can launch products faster.
  • Giving you project flexibility, guidance, and constant expert support.

Curious? Talk to Ubiminds

Ubiminds combines the best of each world when it comes to growing your software business. The IT staff augmentation firm also acts as a boutique agency for filling Principal and Lead positions (as well as other leadership roles) but has a facilitated engagement model so you can upscale and downscale teams quickly. There are no fines for terminating SOWs, for example.

Why hire IT staff augmentation with Ubiminds: everything you need to know about how we source, vet, and custom-curate digital product teams

The Future of IT Staff Augmentation

As the demand for skilled IT professionals continues to grow, the staff augmentation model is likely to become even more popular. Here are some trends to watch for in the future:

  • Increased Use of AI and Automation: Companies are increasingly using AI and automation to streamline the recruitment and onboarding process. AI can help identify the best candidates more quickly and efficiently by analyzing vast amounts of data.
  • Focus on Upskilling and Reskilling: With the rapid pace of technological change, ongoing training and development will be essential. Look for firms that offer upskilling and reskilling programs to ensure their candidates stay current with the latest technologies and best practices.
  • Greater Emphasis on Remote and Hybrid Work: The pandemic has permanently shifted many companies towards remote and hybrid work models. Staff augmentation firms need to be adept at managing remote teams and ensuring seamless collaboration across different locations and time zones.
  • Sustainability and Social Responsibility: As companies increasingly prioritize sustainability and social responsibility, staff augmentation firms will need to demonstrate their commitment to these values. This includes ethical sourcing practices, reducing their environmental footprint, and supporting the communities in which they operate.
  • Enhanced Cybersecurity Measures: With the rise in remote work and cyber threats, companies will demand stringent cybersecurity protocols from their staff augmentation partners. This includes ensuring compliance with international standards and implementing robust security measures to protect sensitive data.

Common IT Staff Augmentation Challenges & How You Can Begin to Solve Them Today

In conclusion, IT staff augmentation offers a flexible, cost-effective solution for scaling your software development capabilities. By partnering with a reputable firm, you can access top talent, accelerate your projects, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. Consider the factors discussed in this guide to find the right partner and make the most of the staff augmentation model.

The main challenge for those who need to find a dedicated and committed  IT Staff Augmentation partner to the needs of your company and the quality of hiring, you need to pay close attention to your decision. A shortlist of trends in IT Staff Augmentation are:

  1. Staff Augmentation will be a permanent solution for the shortage of Top Tech Talent
  2. Companies will prefer only seniors on board to ensure quality in deliveries (the more talented, the better).
  3. Nearshoring is an interesting choice to increase the cost-effectiveness of the project, access expert knowledge, and enhances the workforce, besides solving the issue of language and cultural differences
  4. IT Staff Augmentation with talents residing in UTC/GMT+3 time zone should be more aligned to US companies and have good working hours overlap with U.S. time.

There are some good practices that help to ensure that your outsourcing operation will be successful. To name a few:

1. Communication

Ensure that your IT Staff Augmentation partner has continuous, transparent, and smooth communication. Ask the partner what collaboration & communication tools they usually work with, their methodology, and SLA.

2. Culture and location

Establish a communication protocol to ensure English proficiency and cultural fit from the beginning. Also, prefer nearshore staff instead of offshore to solve time zone issues. For overcoming the time zone differences, synchronizing both in-house & augmented teams and scheduling meetings is a better way.

3. Mismatched Expectations

Because there are many people involved in the Software Development Lifecycle, chances are that the stakeholders can have a different understanding of how the end product should look and function. 

To avoid mismatched expectations between augmented staff, the customer, and your company is a good practice to align the complexity of the project, level of detail in the work description, level of standardization, the unknown variables, and a number of engineers and developers needed.

Want an IT Staff Augmentation Partner Hassle-Free?

With custom hiring strategies Ubiminds guarantees a high level of IT Staff Augmentation to your company. Count on us if you are looking for Fully integrated efforts, Senior engineers only, and Improved ramp-up and tenure.

 

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