Expert Staff Augmentation Services [Your Solution to Building a High-Performing Team]

Are you looking to scale up your software development team without breaking the bank? Have you considered the staff augmentation model? This approach to team-building is gaining momentum among companies of all sizes and sectors.

By supplementing your existing team with experienced and qualified professionals from an external technology company, you can increase your capacity, speed up your project delivery, and reduce costs. Plus, you get to retain full control over your project while benefiting from the expertise and flexibility of a third-party software contractor.

In this article, OpenGeeksLab will explore the key benefits of staff augmentation and why it’s a smart choice for companies looking to optimize their software development processes. Firstly, we will define what staff augmentation is, its types, and how it works. After that, we will look through the major staff augmentation challenges. Finally, we will provide some insights into the best practices for the efficient adoption of a staff augmentation strategy within a business environment. So, let’s dive in and discover how this model can transform the way you do business!

What is Staff Augmentation?

The staff augmentation model involves collaboration between two entities: a company and a third-party software contractor. A company already has an in-house team that manages their project(s). However, they may have limited resources, experience, or skills in some areas of software development, which can result in delays or quality issues with their projects.

To overcome this challenge, a company collaborates with a third-party workforce, who provides access to a larger talent pool. This team is known as the “augmented development team”, which works alongside a company’s existing team.

Schematically, the model can be presented in the following way:

To get a better understanding of how this model works, let’s take a closer look at three major types of staff augmentation services:

Commodity

The commodity model involves enlisting short-term staff members to handle targeted assignments or projects, ranging from routine data entry to repetitive manual testing tasks. When you consider choosing this option, keep in mind several important things. The first one is the expertise and skills your organization lacks. Apart from that, you should have a straightforward plan for integrating new staff members into your in-house team. Finally, define how you will manage and monitor the performance of your temporary employees.

Skill-Based

This model helps businesses identify what skills, knowledge, or qualification they need for a certain position or project and hire specialists with this expertise. It can be a long-term or short-term collaboration. A major benefit of this option is that it allows organizations to save on training and educating their internal workforce.

When considering the skill-based staff augmentation business model, your main task is to ensure that the specialists you want to hire are fully competent to address your specific needs and find the most efficient way to integrate them into your existing team.

Highly Skilled

Finally, this staff augmentation approach allows organizations to quickly fill a business-critical position. By hiring an expert-level staff member to take on certain responsibilities, companies will enable their employees to focus on more important tasks.

An essential thing there is to ensure the high qualification of augmented specialists. Your temporary workforce should be much more skilled and experienced than your in-house team. In this case, they will make a substantial contribution to your project and enrich it with their profound knowledge and expertise.

Besides, you should have clear expectations of your partnership with additional staff members. It would be a sound idea to set specific goals and deliverables to ensure that your software development partnership goes as it should.

Now that you are familiar with staff augmentation types, let’s define the advantages of this model for your business.

Staff Augmentation Market Overview

According to the research handled by Statista, the revenue in the field of offshoring the software development process is expected to reach US$430.50 billion in 2023, with an anticipated annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 8.07%. This projection would result in a market volume of US$587.30 billion by 2027. The report also highlights that the average expenditure per employee in this segment is predicted to rise to US$123.60 in 2023. Furthermore, the United States is expected to top the list of countries generating the most revenue, with a projected amount of US$156.20 billion in the same year.

Source: Statista

In their recent report, Draup shared the findings of a SWOT analysis that sought to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the staff augmentation model. Let’s take a closer look at their findings that perfectly illustrate the current state of this market:

Source: Draup

Thus, the main strengths of team augmentation include minimized additional costs associated with maintaining the in-house team, no infrastructure investment, and reduced time spent recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new employees.

The main weaknesses businesses should consider include increased labor costs, resistance to changes, management overhead, and dependency on internal processes.

In addition, Draup specifies the opportunities of the staff augmentation model businesses should embrace to gain competitive advantages, such as strong structural growth in emerging markets or positive changes in legislative development.

Finally, let’s not forget about some threats that hinder even wider adoption of the staff augmentation model, ​​such as mismanagement and team reliability, and economic downturns.

The staff augmentation market is characterized by robust growth, with increasing demand for skilled professionals and the need for more flexible staffing arrangements being major drivers. Now that we have examined the broader market context and assessed the suitability of staff augmentation, we will explore how organizations can leverage this approach to achieve their goals and address their most pressing needs.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

One of the main reasons for the increased interest in the staff augmentation pricing model is the business value it creates. So let’s have a look at the major benefits offered by this model:

Flexibility

Resource and staff augmentation provides businesses with greater flexibility when it comes to workload management. In this regard, this model surpasses traditional hiring, which makes it difficult to hire specialists when necessary and fire them when they are no longer required. With this option, you will not experience difficulties with upscaling or downscaling your team based on your business priorities.

Access to Top Technical Experts

It may happen that your organization lacks specific expert-level specialists to meet certain project requirements. In this case, partnering with trusted staff augmentation companies is the most efficient way to tackle talent gaps.

Well-established companies offering staff augmentation services will provide you with seamless access to their pre-vetted talents. As a result, you will easily find a specialist who possesses the required skills and will meet your expectations. If some specialists are hard to find in your country, you can target foreign talents. This way, you get access to a much wider talent pool.

Reduced Operational Expenses

In-house staff employment comes with significant expenses. They include salaries and wages, incentive compensations, sick pay, vacations, and more. Collaboration with a reliable staff augmentation provider will allow you to cut operational costs since you do not have to worry about recruitment and hiring costs. All those expenses are budgeted at the initial stage of your partnership with a staff augmentation company.

Boost in Efficiency and Productivity

Shifting some responsibilities from your in-house team onto augmented staff members allows you to use your internal workforce more efficiently. Now that you hire employees with specific skills and qualifications, your in-house team can focus on more important strategic goals and tasks. Such workload sharing results in increased productivity and efficiency within your organization.

Fresh Perspective

Collaboration with eternal employees will give fresh insights into your company’s performance or processes. You will figure out faster what works for your organization and what does and make the necessary changes. Apart from that, third-party specialists will enrich your project with fresh ideas and unconventional approaches you have not considered before. This way, you get better chances of launching a revolutionary product that stands out from the crowd.

It is worth noting that since external employees are not involved in office politics and do not show loyalty to any office groups, you can always count on their honest, unbiased opinion.

Regardless of the clear advantages of the staff augmentation model, it should be noted that this approach is not flawless. Below you can see the main pitfalls of staff augmentation you should bear in mind.

Challenges and Risks of Staff Augmentation

Enhancing your development team with external specialists can be an effective way to quickly acquire the skills and expertise needed for a particular project, but as with any approach to expanding your development team, staff augmentation has its share of challenges that should be considered before making a decision.

Communication Gaps

Your external employees may find it hard to establish initial contact with your in-house team. It is especially so when internal staff members operate from the office and specialists you additionally hire work online or if they come from different countries. However, today when more and more employees tend to work remotely, it should not be an issue. You just need to discuss with a staff augmentation services company the best ways to integrate newcomers into your existing team.

Quality Risks

Another staff augment challenge is connected with the quality of services external employees provide. Moreover, this risk exists in any collaboration format. The best thing you can do is to choose a staff augmentation provider wisely.

A good idea will be to visit their website, check the projects their specialists have delivered, and explore customer testimonials on such platforms as Clutch or GoodFirms. Such a comprehensive approach increases your chances of establishing efficient and productive long-term collaboration.

Lack of Internal Knowledge

Sometimes, outstaff employees may experience adaptation issues because your corporate culture or work environment differs from those they got used to. It may require changing their work habits or adjusting to new soft skill practices. For this reason, simply hiring additional staff members is not enough. You need to share all information related to your company culture and workflows with a software development partner to ensure smooth integration and onboarding processes.

By being aware of staff augmentation benefits and downsides, you can make an informed decision about whether this approach is right for your business and ensure a successful outcome. Staff augmentation solutions can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to expand their development capabilities, but it’s important to understand when and how to use this approach to maximize its benefits.

Privacy and Security Concerns

Data security becomes a major concern for businesses planning to add external specialists to their in-house teams. The reason is that organizations are forced to involve the third-party workforce in their internal processes and provide them with access to sensitive information.

To minimize data breaches and other security risks, companies should perform regular security audits.

Another mandatory condition for secure collaboration with the company offering staff augmentation services is signing a non-disclosure agreement. This document allows regulating the processes of data access, collection, and transfers and guarantees that your sensitive data under no circumstances will become public.

To sum up, let’s take a look and the main advantages and disadvantages of staff augmentation:

Next, we will explore when organizations should consider using the staff augmentation model, taking into account the benefits and drawbacks we have discussed. By understanding the situations in which staff augmentation can be most effective, businesses can make informed decisions about their staffing needs and achieve their strategic objectives.

When to Use Staff Augmentation Model

Staff augmentation can be an effective staffing model for organizations that need access to specialized skills and want to maintain flexibility in their workforce. However, it is not without its challenges, and organizations must carefully weigh the pros and cons before deciding whether to introduce this model into their software development partnership.

If you are still uncertain about whether the staff augmentation model is suitable for your organization, consider the following specific scenarios where resource and software team augmentation can be an excellent solution.

You Need to Reinforce Your In-House Team

When launching a new project or releasing an innovative product, you may need to improve your expertise with advanced skills or competencies (it can be, for example, data science, blockchain, or the Internet of Things) that are missing in your organization.

The best way to level up your technical expertise while leveraging internal resources is a partnership with a reliable staff augmentation firm.

Your Organization Lacks Particular Skills

Another popular reason for choosing the software staff augmentation model is the demand for specialists with certain skills, for example, solution architects, business analysts, blockchain developers, DevOps engineers, data scientists, or quality assurance engineers. Finding, hiring, and onboarding these professionals takes time you may not have.

For this reason, it will be much easier to find an experienced company offering team augmentation services to get any specialist and expertise you need quickly and effortlessly.

You Need to Expand Your Team Fast

Again, if you do not have time or patience to recruit and train internal employees, a collaboration with a staff augmentation company becomes your lifesaver. All you have to do is to contact your software development partner, review the resumes of required specialists, interview them, and get them on board.

If any of these cases seem familiar to you, you should give the staff augmentation model a try.

Now that you understand the situations where staff augmentation can be advantageous, it’s time to explore the best practices for successful implementation. In the next section, we’ll delve into key insights and strategies to help you optimize your staffing process for maximum business success.

Best Practices for Implementing a Staff Augmentation Strategy

Below, you can find some best practices and practical advice that will help you make the most of the team augmentation model and achieve the best results in terms of productivity, efficiency, and scalability.

Identify Skills Your Company Lacks

Your first step is to uncover the skill gap you are going to tackle with the help of a staff augmentation firm. Talk to your managers, consult with your HR executives, run a survey, or interview your employees to define missing but required skills, knowledge, and expertise and decide whether these are long-term or short-term gaps.

It would be a good idea to compare the current team capabilities with those you will need in a few months. This way, you will always stay ahead of the curve.

Choose the Right Partner

This step is crucial since the collaboration with staff augmentation partners will significantly affect your company’s efficiency and determine the success or failure of your project. Here are some tips on finding a software development partner:

• Conduct comprehensive research. Target both local and foreign markets. This way, you increase your chances of finding professionals that possess skills and qualifications that your local technical experts lack.
• Check your potential vendor’s expertise. Make sure that the specialists you are going to collaborate with have enough qualifications to cover your hiring needs. Apart from the necessary skills, your staff augmentation partner should have relevant experience. In other words, these professionals should have practical experience with similar projects.
• Review the vendor’s credentials. Take your time to examine their case studies and customer testimonials. You can even speak to their past clients if you have some questions or doubts.
• Conduct an interview. If you have several potential vendors, hold a video conferencing call with them to make the final choice. It will be the most efficient way to test their hard and soft skills. As for soft skills, we recommend paying attention to communication, conflict management, and creativity.
• Evaluate your candidates. During the call with a potential software development partner, discuss their workflow to find out how much time they need to get the job done and understand whether they will be able to meet your deadlines. You can also tell them about your project and ask how they will work on it.
• Ensure that a vendor will fit your company culture. Shared values, similar corporate cultures, and processes leave no room for miscommunication and facilitate transparent and straightforward collaboration.
• Pay close attention to linguistic and time differences. You can use several approaches to addressing these issues. First, discuss time zone boundaries even before signing an NDA agreement. Second, be specific when establishing deadlines. Third, keep in mind the designated working hours of your external employees. Finally, embrace the power of virtual processes and project management tools.
• Choose the relevant key performance indicators. Setting the right KPIs is a proven way of monitoring the performance and productivity of your external team. It would be a sound idea to set key performance indicators at the project start and check them at the end of each month to track the team’s progress.

By carefully evaluating potential staffing partners based on these criteria, you can make an informed decision and select a partner who will work collaboratively with you to achieve your goals.

Make Sure That Remote Employees Feel Themselves a Part of Your Team

When using staff augmentation services, adjust your management style and build a positive relationship with each worker. Constantly communicate with both teams to ensure they are on the same page. For instance, each time you hold a video conference call, leave some time to discuss their hobbies, interests, and lifestyle to foster openness and healthy relationships in the team.

Follow this advice, and you will find the best external employees that will enrich your project with their high skills, expertise, and fresh ideas to strengthen your in-house team.

Staff Augmentation with OpenGeeksLab

OpenGeeksLab is a trusted software development partner that delivers a wide range of end-to-end services, from software audit and consulting, and custom web and mobile development to complex blockchain development solutions and cloud engineering.

OpenGeeksLab is always ready to help businesses overcome their lack of expertise in certain areas. Thus, you may use our staff augmentation services and hire the following experts from OpenGeeksLab:

• UX/UI designers will create eye-catching and intuitive interfaces that help users understand how to use complex technical products.
• Software architects will build scalable architecture, identify the potential project bottlenecks and provide the most suitable solutions to address them.
• Quality assurance engineers will make sure that your product performs smoothly without any bugs and satisfies all predestined requirements and quality standards.
• Software developers will build complex software solutions with extensive functionality tailored to specific business needs.
• Project managers will organize, plan, and monitor your software development project and ensure its delivery on time and within budget.
• DevOps Engineers will manage your cloud infrastructure.

Additionally, we offer the following services:

• Chief Technology Officer-as-a-Service, or CTO-as-a-Service. The highly-skilled technical expert will assess the digital readiness of your organization, identify technology gaps and needs, and come up with recommendations on specific solutions based on your needs and company profile.
• Business Analysis-as-a-Service, or BAaaS. Our business analysts help startups and well-established companies set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives and reach them with innovative solutions. They minimize risks of inaccurate requirements to boost development lifecycle and time-to-market.

By partnering with OpenGeeksLab for staff augmentation, you can tap into a global talent pool, optimize your staffing process, and stay ahead of the competition in today’s fast-paced business environment.

The Cost of Staff Augmentation Services

The last question we would like to discuss is the staff augmentation services cost. Based on our experience, we will define the key factors that have the greatest impact on the price you will have to pay for the extension of your in-house team.

• Technology stack. Knowledge of specific programming languages, frameworks, and other technology solutions may define how much services of particular specialists may cost. Suppose you want to embrace the power of emerging technology, for example, artificial intelligence, blockchain, or robotic process automation. Skilled professionals in these fields are as good as gold. Consequently, their services may turn out to be rather costly.
• Project scope. A complex project will require long-term collaboration with a staff augmentation services company, which will greatly influence your bottom line.
• Team composition. The more third-party employees you will need to hire, the higher the cost of their services will be.

Consider carefully all those factors in allocating the right amount of budget funds for the expansion of your project team.

Fill Your Talent Gap with Staff Augmentation Provided by OpenGeeksLab

We have provided you with a complex overview of the staff augmentation approach. You have found out how it works, what benefits it can bring, and what staff augmentation challenges you should consider. Now you can efficiently adopt this model to tackle your talent gaps and increase your company’s productivity.

OpenGeeksLab is always eager to offer our staff augmentation services to help you scale your team and create a customized strategy tailored to your unique business needs. Contact us to seamlessly integrate augmented staff into your in-house team.