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Staff Augmentation
Staff augmentation is a business strategy where a company hires external professionals, often from a third-party service provider, to complement its existing staff for a specific project or period.
It involves bringing in additional resources to fill skill gaps, increase productivity, and meet project deadlines.
In staff augmentation, the hired professionals are integrated into the client's team and work alongside their existing employees.
The client keeps full control over the project and defines the roles and responsibilities of the augmented staff. The augmented professionals handle specific tasks or functions and work under the client's management.
Choosing the right staff augmentation service
When selecting a staff augmentation service provider, consider the following factors:
Expertise and Experience
Look for providers with a track record of delivering high-quality services in your industry or a domain.
Flexibility and Scalability
Make sure that the provider rightly adapt to your changing needs and scale the team as required.
Cultural Fit
Assess the provider's cultural alignment with the organisation to ensure smooth integration and collaboration.
Communication
Evaluate provider's communication channels, project mgmt methods for effective communication
Talent Pool
Determine the provider's ability to access skilled professionals who fits into your corporate realm.
Cost-effectiveness
Staff augmentation service has to be cost effective. Evaluate pricing models, such as hourly rates.
Comparing Staff augmentation with Outsourcing models/Features of staff augmentation
IT staff augmentation is outsourcing required expertise. However, it is just one of the many outsourcing models to choose from. There are alternatives to look up to, like independent contractors (freelancers), Time and material (T&M), Dedicated teams, and Offshore development centers. So, how do they fare against staff augmentation, and which one is suitable for you? There are certain facets that can be different or similar for these outsourcing models.
Office facilities
Office equipment and Rentals
Recruiting
Hiring a developer or Development
Payroll
Accounting and Payroll
Engagement
Time dedicated by the Developer
Management
Vendor-side or Client-side
Overhead expenses
Licenses, Furniture, Bills
Salary reviews
Increments and Bonuses
Rate review
Setting the prices for the service
Communication
Communicating with devp team
Staff augmentation vs Independent contractors
Hiring a freelancer would require you (or a client) to be responsible for most of the points mentioned above if not all. You would have to deal with communication, management, payroll, etc., a vendor would cover all of which themself if you chose IT staff augmentation.
Hiring independent contractors means you won’t have to pay a commission to a vendor. Instead, you would hire the contractor directly. However, an important thing to consider here is that specific limitations apply to the position occupied by an independent contractor in an organization. For instance, you wouldn’t need to provide employee perks or compensate for overhead expenses when working with an independent contractor. Plus, their role could also involve limited access to your company data or information that you would typically share with your augmented staff.
Staff augmentation vs Managed services
The most apparent distinction between IT staff augmentation and managed services is the amount of control a client provides the vendor with. While the former only assigns the provisioning of staff required to the vendor, and the rest stays under a client’s control, the latter operates as a one-in-all service. Vendors offering manager services presume external control of a client’s non-core systems. They manage all the aspects of the client’s functioning when providing talent.
Therefore, managed services presuppose a higher amount of delegation. This can often be an excellent solution for companies looking to optimize their resource allocation and concentrate on their in-house teams only for strategic priorities. A managed service provider usually has a developer/development team “benched.” This means you can begin with project-related tasks right after the contract signing instead of waiting while the vendor hires workers.
Staff augmentation vs Dedicated teams
While these two outsourcing models may appear similar, there’s a key difference: the outsourcing vendor assumes more responsibility when a client wants a dedicated team.
You can manage your remote developers directly with resource and staff augmentation, but a dedicated team operates under the vendor’s supervision. The former presupposes full-time engagement, while the latter often works with multiple clients on any day. The vendor reviews salaries for dedicated teams, whereas the client does it when augmenting staff.
