IT staff augmentation is one of the most effective business solutions for filling skill or workforce gaps. At the same time, it can be one of the most challenging.
Luckily, here are some best IT staff augmentation practices that can help you increase the chances of a successful project.
IT staff augmentation in a nutshell
IT staff augmentation is a flexible outsourcing model. It’s a business strategy that involves hiring an external tech expert or experts without actually bringing them in-house.
IT staff augmentation is a great way to enhance your IT team and drive your company forward. It’s cherry-picking the right skills, experience, and competencies that your project requires, a sort of partnership that works as long as you need it to work.
If it’s done right, it provides a host of benefits such as access to top-tier developers from around the world, reduced costs, and faster time-to-market.
Moreover, it can become a bedrock for a long and productive collaboration with a reliable team of external developers.
IT staff augmentation can work wonders for businesses in cases such as
- IT talent gaps
- Missing competencies
- Missing experience
- Staff shortages
- Time constraints
- Tight budget
- Temporary scale-up
IT staff augmentation – how does it work?
The great thing about IT staff augmentation is that it can provide you with temporary team members when you need them and for as long as you need them. And all this in a short time, as you don’t have to spend precious time looking for experts and negotiating.
That is the task for your vendor, as well as administrative tasks, paperwork, and infrastructure support.
A lot like remote employees, the temporary external developers are integrated into your in-house team and they work under your management.
IT staff augmentation can come in different sizes and shapes and for any length of time.
Short-term IT staff augmentation is often suitable for short-term projects, or projects that require specific skills you won’t need after project completion. It’s also used during periods of increased productivity, vacations or long absence of full-time employees.
Long-term IT staff augmentation is used in projects when a skill needed is so niche that it would take too much time to recruit the right person for a full-time position. Also, it’s used when there is a need to fill a skill gap or cut operational costs, or simply when hiring in-house isn’t an option.
IT staff augmentation best practices
You’ve decided to reinforce your company’s IT team through staff augmentation. Now, what are the best practices you can adopt to make this model work seamlessly and get the most out of your IT staff augmentation services?
Choose a reliable and reputable vendor
Finding the right vendor can be a difficult task. But it’s crucial to choose a reliable one, because you aren’t only looking for an extension of your team, but a partner, an ally.
You can vet staff augmentation vendors by examining recommendations and reviews. Look for the experiences of their previous clients. Investigate the outcomes of their projects.
Take their case studies into consideration. This can provide insight into the skills and experience of their developers, as well as information about the industries and projects they’ve worked on.
Pay close attention to their work culture and assess whether you would be comfortable communicating and collaborating with them.
Clearly define expectations and skill gaps
Analyze your internal team and resources to identify the knowledge and skill gaps present in your company. This will help you decide what you really need to fortify your team for your project.
Be crystal clear about project objectives and your expectations of all team members.
One of the best practices is to identify project timelines, specific tasks, deadlines, and outcomes.
Provide transparent and open communication
In the staff augmentation model, communication is one of the top challenges. However, it’s critical to the productivity of your team and the success of your project.
Maintain regular face-to-face communication through video conferencing tools to improve communication and build trust between team members.
Employ project and communication management tools
Project and communication tools such as Trello, Jira, or Asana can be especially useful in IT staff augmentation. They can help you optimize the work timelines, ensure deliveries on time, and improve productivity and quality of work.
By using these tools, you can enable each team member to see their exact tasks, track progress, and collaborate seamlessly with other members. In this way, the entire team, including the project manager, can work in sync regardless of the location and time zone of the members.
Document everything
Staff augmentation allows you to scale your team according to your project needs. It’s crucial that new, external team members get access to all information relevant to the project in order to do their job properly.
The best practice is to have code documentation, training manuals, samples, videos, or reports you can share with your developers.
Your team can use a platform like Google Drive to organize and store information, and tools like Slack and Jira to ease and record communication and tasks.
Show your appreciation
The developers you acquired through staff augmentation are only temporary members of your team. However, their role in the success of your project is no less than that of your internal team.
Recognition for their efforts can have a big impact on the quality of their work, motivation, engagement and productivity.
Also, they can come from different cultures and backgrounds. Being aware of and respecting these differences can improve communication, relationships and the work environment.
When your team members, both external and in-house, feel valued and appreciated, they can deliver better results that ultimately lead to your company’s success.
Potential for success
IT staff augmentation is a powerful outsourcing model that can take your company to the next level. However, finding the right staff augmentation vendor can be a challenging task. Making your augmented team work like a well-oiled machine is even more challenging.
But considering and adopting the best staff augmentation practices increases your project’s chances of success and allows you to stay competitive in today’s fierce software development market.
