Staff augmentation services are a form of outsourcing services. Many businesses look at outsourcing to reduce expenses. Here you can learn about IT staff augmentation Services. Many companies rely on internal development teams that work on their products and services. Having a full-fledged in-house development team certainly has its benefits. There’s a greater level of oversight on the resources that come into the office every day and work for the company.
Since they’re directly employed by the company, they’re effectively stakeholders in the project’s success. However, oftentimes situations can arise when the internal resources aren’t enough for the work to continue smoothly.
Many different elements can lead to such a situation. A developer or project manager could leave unexpectedly or the existing resources may already be spread too thin that it starts to affect the quality of the work.
Hiring new resources at this stage can be a challenge. Many companies look for a quicker solution that doesn’t involve going through multiple rounds of interviews to find people who might be the right fit. That’s why they rely on staff augmentation services.
What is Staff Augmentation?
Outsourcing has truly changed the way that businesses operate in the global age. It is essentially a form of outsourcing. It has enabled them to engage talent far and wide to significantly increase the strength of people working on their projects. Many businesses also look at outsourcing as a means to reduce their expenses since it can often be cost-effective to delegate work to resources in other countries.
What are Staff Augmentation Services?
IT Staff augmentation is essentially a form of outsourcing. However, instead of a longer-term agreement, staff augmentation services provide manpower for a project on an immediate and flexible basis. The entire idea behind staff augmentation is to supplement existing teams with highly skilled personnel that are tasked with working on a particular project.
Staff augmentation can often be confused with managed services. It's an entirely different approach to resource acquisition. Companies outsource the management of many areas of their IT operations to a managed services provider. On the other hand, staff augmentation is largely related to meeting the immediate resource requirements.
This flexible approach is well suited to many businesses. They can rely on a staff augmentation service to quickly bring in skilled personnel that does the work in line with their business objectives. The personnel that can be acquired through such a service may include software developers, infrastructure specialists, project managers, system analysts, and more.
How IT staff augmentation services work?
Companies that are interested in utilizing IT Staff augmentation should first understand the process behind how it actually works. They need to do a bit of groundwork as well before bringing new talent on board.
Identify talent requirements
The need for staff augmentation arises when a project is already underway and it becomes evident there's a resource gap that needs to be filled so that the project can continue effectively.
An easier way of going about this is to get in touch with your staff augmentation vendor and discuss the project requirements with them. They will then be able to make suggestions about the resources that will be most relevant to your project.
Onboarding new talent
Now that the resource gaps have been identified and new people have been brought in, it’s imperative that they’re onboarded properly. Onboarding refers to a lot of the legwork that must be done in order to ensure that the actual work on the project can proceed smoothly.
This may include the signing of contracts and NDAs, for example. This also includes introductions with the rest of the team and allowing them to become familiar with the work environment.
Keep an eye on the process
Many companies that opt for staff augmentation tend to monitor the progress of their project on their own. This involves remaining up to speed on everything that the new resources are doing, answering any questions that they may have about the project’s direction, and generally being available for them in order to provide support.
It’s not something that’s a must for every company to do on their own. Many actually bring in dedicated project managers as part of their staff augmentation exercise so that there’s always a point person to manage the process.
Why do companies leverage staff augmentation?
There are quite a few reasons why companies leverage staff augmentation. The biggest reason is that they want to extend their in-house development team. This can be on a per-project or even a per-task basis. For example, if an app update needs to be sent out rapidly, additional developers can be brought on quickly to complete the work in the shortest amount of time possible.
Achieving cost efficiencies is another reason why many companies are increasingly using staff augmentation services. They don't have to provide the office space for the personnel or pay benefits in addition to the salaries that they would give to a full-time employee of the company. These overheads don’t exist in the staff augmentation model of outsourcing.
There may also be times when people with a certain skill set are required. For example, you may need more security researchers than you had originally anticipated for the project. Relying on staff augmentation will allow you to immediately bring on experienced professionals without the project suffering from any disruption.
The pros and cons of staff augmentation services
There are many benefits to using staff augmentation services, they include but are not limited to the following:
Ability to scale up quickly
Need to quickly increase the number of people working on the project? Staff augmentation is the easiest way to bring in more people who are qualified to work on the project. Since they work remotely, they can be anywhere in the world while they work on what you need them to.
Tap into experience
It’s also a great way of working with people who are more experienced in a particular subject matter than the in-house team. The new resource would thus be able to provide an objective view of the work being done and increase the quality of the work overall.
Reduce overhead
If a company needs to reduce overhead, it can start to rely more on staff augmentation to fulfill business needs. This will free up more capital that can be utilized for new projects or investments.
Now that’s not to say that there aren’t any downsides to using staff augmentation services. Some of them include:
Requires more oversight
Since you’re working with third-party personnel, more oversight will be required on part of the company. It will be imperative to ensure that no trade secrets or confidential information can be misused by the people who are contracted for the work.
Onboarding can be time-intensive
People who are being brought in the middle of a project will need a reasonable amount of time to get their bearings. It can’t be expected of them to jump right in and hit the ground running. So even though staff augmentation can enable rapid scaling of development teams, a certain amount of time must be budgeted for onboarding.
Long-term costs are higher
As previously mentioned, staff augmentation works best as a stop-gap arrangement. Relying entirely on this model will lead to higher long-term costs once agency fees and any other charges related to the recruitment are taken into account.
What outsourcing model is best?
It all really depends on the kind of work that needs to be done and its complexity. The needs of the business are also a deciding factor. Staff augmentation is best in situations where new resources need to be brought in quickly and only when they don’t have to be retained for extended periods of time.
Managed service providers operate differently. They’re hired to look after entire IT strategies or segments of it with dedicated staff. It’s a more long-term approach and one that requires more commitment from the business as well. The managed services model is best for companies that want the peace of mind that they have the right team looking after their needs for as long as they need them to.
Zibtek can fulfill your staff augmentation needs
If you’ve decided that staff augmentation is the way forward, now you need to find a partner that can provide the kind of talent that you’re looking for. Zibtek can help you with your staff augmentation needs.
We’re one of the world’s leading software development firms with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups. We are based in the United States with offices in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Zibtek also manages a global talent pool of highly skilled developers, project managers, security researchers, and IT specialists from within its offices in the United States. Our skilled experts can be quickly deployed to work on your projects no matter the scale or complexity.
If you’d like to know more about how we can help you out with staff augmentation, do reach out today and we’ll be in touch.
