How successful a business depends upon the collaborative efforts among the right and skilled team. A company may require immediate technical help in a particular project. When such a scenario arises, IT staff augmentation can help a company achieve its goal and get the desired resource while working remotely. IT staff augmentation can help an organization become competitive. It does this by availing skilled professionals that have the ingenuity to perform various tasks and projects. IT staff augmentation services are affordable and flexible. Therefore, the clients can hire a lot of staff, from one developer to an entire team.
IT staff augmentation and traditional outsourcing have a sizeable influence on the world economy. They are both cheap and flexible and enable the companies to focus on the core activities within an enterprise. Therefore, productivity improves, and you can offer quality products.
IT Staff Augmentation Services How to Choose the Best One
What does an IT staff augmentation model mean?
The augmented model means you extend your in-IT team with specialized or skilled technocrats on a long- or short-term basis. Thus, you can cover the skills gap within a team by contacting dedicated specialists and matching your IT needs for the project. IT staff augmentation also ensures that your business remains competitive and eliminates the liabilities associated with hiring in-house employees.
To understand the concept of IT staff augmentation better, let us consider this example. A company may develop an e-commerce website. It may already have a team of in-house developers. To launch the project time, the company may need five more developers who have special skills. Recruiting, contracting, and selecting the right skill might take time. Therefore, the company can use IT staff augmentation and hire developers in two or three weeks. The company can then drop the augmented IT staff after the project is over, and there will not be any legal complications.
To find dedicated IT experts who can join your company in a matter of days, ensure that you look at firms that offer specialized staff augmentation services, especially in IT. The staff is under the agency’s payroll and management. Therefore, they can join your team quickly because of no vacations, payroll management, administration of office space training, legal, and other administrative tasks. However, onboarding the augmented IT or tech talent is still necessary. Below are some reasons that you may choose the IT staff augmentation model:
- The rising staff turnover with your company or to find a temporary substitute for an employee on leave because of illness or maternity leave.
- When the in-house team is overloaded with work and there are no other skilled talents that you can use to invest in a new project.
- A company needs special expertise that you do not have in your technology stack for delivering the project, and you do not intend to keep the professional after the project.
- When you have a CTO on your team or yourself are tech-savvy, it is critical to have a person who controls the delivery of goals within the company.
- The company needs to expand its team rapidly. To avoid the wastage of many months in recruiting a senior developer or a person who has the right expertise, it is better to liaise with the IT staff augmentation firm.
Areas of IT staff augmentation
With technologies emerging every day, the areas that IT staff augmentation services cover have also been changing. IT staff augmentation vendors help a business build capability that is vital in the delivery of high-level projects. They offer skilled workers that cover a broad range of areas in information technology like:
- Backend web and application development
- Front end software and web design and development services
- Experts in content management
- Full-stack web and mobile application developers
- Consulting services
- Integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into various software platforms
- Managed IT staffing
- DevOps experts, and
- Other IT services in both hardware and software.
Types of IT staff augmentation
Depending on your project, there are two broad types of IT staff augmentation that you can apply.
Short term or temporary IT staff augmentation
Do you urgently need an IT staff, be it a programmer, designer, or technician? If the project will not cover an extended period, short-term augmentation is the way to go. Hence, you do not have to waste months of recruiting and money on training.
Long-term IT staff augmentation
If the project takes an extended period, you can also consider long-term augmentation of the IT services. The project manager still controls the task completion while the augmentation firm takes care of the rest.
In the IT industry, remote teams have proven successful. High-quality programmers are employed to deliver high-quality work that you can sell at a benefit. Recruiting in-house IT specialists is a time-consuming and daunting task. To make matters worse, you cannot rely on freelancers. Opting for IT staff augmentation is beneficial at a fraction of the cost that you’d have used for hiring. However, IT staff augmentation depends on the choice of time, fixed-price business model, or materials. Below are some reasons you may choose IT staff augmentation services over hiring in-house.
- With staff augmentation, there is a higher staff turnover
- It is more expensive to hire in-house than IT staff augmentation company
- Limitations in the budget
- The time a company has to use for recruitment, especially in the overpopulated IT market
- There may lack local talent pool
What are the benefits of IT staff augmentation services?
Companies consider IT staff augmentation when they want to fit budget and time constraints. It is akin to the benefits they add to your team. Below are some benefits that accrue to a company when they use IT staff augmentation services.
Reduced recruiting time
Recruiting a skilled worker can be a challenging undertaking that outcome you can not predict. You can use several months to recruit an employee only for them to quit in a few weeks. What should you do if no one in your area who meets the demands moves the candidates? What if the time required to recruit a candidate is so minimal?
All the above scenarios can arise either in isolation or all of them at one time within a business. Headhunting a specialist takes an extrapolated time that you would otherwise use to perform core functions in a business. In such a case, IT staff augmentation plays a crucial role. Working with vendor firms guarantees increased productivity because they thoroughly vet their employees to ensure that they match them to your needs swiftly.
Efficient staff management
Compared to outsourcing, there is more control of workflow management and team in staff augmentation. In IT staff augmentation, you handle various management tasks yourself. Therefore, you have more authority, unlike when you have outsourced.
When you take personal responsibility for monitoring your IT staff, the development process, and the efforts within the team, you can take swift actions. Through this, you avoid a situation in which unforeseen issues may arise later. This enables you to offer efficient services to your customers and manage your staff efficiently.
Ensures Secured Flexibility
Do you have a massive project coming up? The right solution is IT staff augmentation services to be adaptable to various business conditions that talent sourcing vendors secure. When you have an unexpected increase in the workloads, you are not worried because augmentation offers a model you can extend to add more staff who have the requisite skills. Therefore, a company can take up any task regardless of its complexity or size. The ability to cover any vacant positions within days is also an added advantage of IT staff augmentation.
Reduced spending
IT staff augmentation services are an on-demand activity. Hence, you do not need to arrange for hardware, software, workspace, equipment, and other supplies like you would in a permanent hiring undertaking. The company need not worry about other costs like health insurance, vacations, sick leaves, and paying taxes for an employee. The vendor covers all the above. However, the net salary rates may still be high if you hire more experienced and high-quality staff.
Because the demand for professionals is high when you find a candidate who can fit your criteria, hire them immediately. However, considering everything, in-house hiring is still more expensive than IT staff augmentation service.
Enables a manager to focus on the people and not the vendors
Businesses look at the experience and expertise of the outsourcing vendor. In IT staff augmentation, the business focuses on the talents and skills of the individual people. What does this staff member add to my team? The vendor or firm may have many years of experience and still have unqualified staff. Hence, targeting the skill required for a project before choosing the vendor is the right strategy. Through IT staff augmentation, you can select an expert who matches the skills that a project requires. You can select programmers and designers from different vendors provided they have the skills your project needs or get them all from one firm. That is how flexible IT staff augmentation services cab be. Using either approach, you can have the required workforce within few days to a week.
Global talent pool
Traditionally, businesses and companies used to depend on the local supply of labor. Hence, they had to reduce their goals and benchmarks to what a company can achieve because there was no staff to conduct specific tasks in their localities.
The other benefit of IT staff augmentation company or services is that it provides access to a global talent pool. Therefore, an employer is not limited to options they can hire from. They have the option to search for candidates around the world for the exact skill in need for the project. This has led to the delivery of quality products and services and increased the competition levels in the IT products market.
How to choose the best IT staff augmentation service
Are you considering IT staff augmentation? It would be best if you considered the goals that you plan to achieve.
For instance, if you are looking for an expert in machine learning, considering the cost is counterproductive. There are vast IT augmentation models. Thus, weigh the advantages and the disadvantages before choosing a model. Below are a few points that can help you make a better decision when choosing an IT staff augmentation service.
Know your staffing needs
What is the reason for extending your developer team? You must answer this question before hiring an IT staff augmentation team. You may need a highly qualified team of software engineers or trying to fill the inadequacies within your office staff. Alternatively, there may be a need for extra engineering resources from your project managers for the completion of a project in time.
Depending on your need for specific project duration, you need to evaluate your staffing needs. You may need developers, designers, or an analytics expert to ensure that you meet the project completion deadlines. To be better understand the staffing needs, it is better o consult with the HR team, the employees, and the manager.
What is the type of contract?
To ensure that you are not stressed financially, it is better to inquire about the contract type from the IT staff augmentation services vendor. Ensure that you get an IT staff augmentation services vendor who will tailor contractual agreements that fit your business requirements. The firm should take time to understand the development environment in your business. This ensures that they give you access to outstanding talents that your project needs.
Conduct extensive research on the IT staff augmentation company
After you are through with the staffing blueprint for augmentation, ensure that you have comprehensively researched the IT staff augmentation company you intend to source from. It helps you determine if the potential staff have the requisite skills that your project requires. Their reviews, existing projects, and partnerships can be a pointer to how well the company is. You can achieve this by talking with past clients to see their level of satisfaction with the vendor’s services.
The protocols of communication
In any work environment, communication is critical. The communication protocols the IT staff augmentation company uses are critical in determining how successful the project will be. The IT staff augmentation company you decide to work with must have simple and clearly defined protocols for communication. They must give constant progress updates on the project regardless of where they are located. When you have a transparent communication protocol, there is an uninterrupted workflow within the company. Therefore, you can easily monitor and adjust it depending on the feedback from the team.
The project schedules
To ensure successful completion of the service, the IT staff augmentation service must keep abreast with the project development schedule. Enlist the services of an IT staff augmentation partner who can efficiently meet the set operational schedules. The IT staff augmentation vendor needs to give you a comprehensive resource management plan, dependable IT services, an exceptional team of skilled engineers and designers, and the mode of operation, either onshore or offshore. This will help you complete the project within the set deadlines.
Bottom Line
IT staff augmentation services are of age. It is hard for companies, especially small and medium enterprises, to keep at pace with the ever-changing technologies. While outsourcing is an excellent choice, some costs and demerits give augmentation an upper hand. Consider the pointers above for you to choose a better IT staff augmentation service that will deliver quality products on time.
