Team Augmentation as a Powerful Business Development Tool
Hiring new employees can be slow, expensive, and frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. Team augmentation enables you to quickly add experienced specialists to your in-house team on a temporary basis.
If you’ve ever tried to hire new employees quickly, you know how difficult it can be. Recruiting in-house employees takes time and often means interviewing countless candidates only for them to turn you down at the last minute. Outsourcing, on the other hand, can sometimes cause communication difficulties and quality issues because you don’t have direct managerial control.
Enter team augmentation (also known as staff augmentation), a hiring model that can help you quickly hire specialists to join your in-house team.
What Is Team Augmentation?
So, what is team augmentation? This model allows companies to expand their in-house team with professionals hired via a third-party vendor on a contractual basis. These temporary employees will become part of the company’s in-house team and work alongside the company’s full-time employees.
Team augmentation is best suited for projects that will take less than two years to finish. However, some companies also turn to staff augmentation when a full-time staff member takes an extended leave of absence, they don’t have the budget for a full-time specialist, or they can’t find any local candidates with the necessary skills or experience to fill a gap in their workforce.
For example, you might use IT Staff augmentation services if you need to update an internal CRM system but don’t have someone with the necessary skills and experience on your existing team.
What Is Project Augmentation?
Project augmentation, or the temporary scaling up of project teams, enables companies to meet their objectives on time. If a company reviews its current workforce and realizes they need additional skills (or simply another set of hands) on any given project, it might turn to a vendor for help temporarily scaling up its project team.
What Is the Difference Between Staff Augmentation and Outsourcing?
While staff augmentation involves hiring engineers to join your in-house team temporarily, outsourcing involves hiring an external group that will work separately from your in-house team to complete a specific task.
Like team augmentation, outsourcing can provide your company with engineers, but you can also outsource UI/UX design projects, analysis, quality assurance, project management roles, support, maintenance, and more.
The staff augmentation model gives you more control over your team and the project. After all, the temporary hires will be integrated into your in-house team and report to you, whereas an outsourcing agency will handle the recruitment, training, and management of professionals on the team assigned to your project. Essentially, they’ll handle everything and deliver the completed project.
In short, IT staff augmentation services will give you the personnel to complete your project, while an outsourcing service will provide you with the project itself. Both methods are less expensive and offer more flexibility than traditional hires, and they can help you gain access to workers with sought-after technical skills.
What Are the Benefits of Team Augmentation?
Many companies turn to team augmentation to take some pressure off their in-house staff members and improve their time to market. The main benefits of staff augmentation include:
Increased Flexibility
Hiring and firing people isn’t easy, making scaling teams up and down a slow, challenging, resource-intensive process. However, staff augmentation changes the game. With the team augmentation model, you easily add experts to your team based on your current needs. Once a project is done, or you no longer need an augmented staff member’s specific expertise, you can scale down again.
Reduced Costs
Another main benefit of IT staff augmentation is that it can help you save money. In fact, many companies hire augmented employees when they can’t afford full-time specialists, as it’s often cheaper to work with an augmented employee than hire, train, and pay a new employee. After all, you won’t have to spend as much time or resources recruiting candidates and handling payroll, as your IT staff augmentation services vendor will take care of that. Plus, it can reduce general overhead costs — and you’ll always only need to pay for what you need.
Increased Visibility and Communication
Staff augmentation allows for more visibility and direct communication than outsourcing. Instead of relying on a third party to assign tasks, plan sprints, and send progress updates, you can personally work with supplemental staff members. Not only will this enable you to quickly address any challenges that arise, but it also gives you complete control over the entire development process. You can also see first-hand how augmented employees integrate with your in-house team.
High-Quality Output
While outsourcing often requires developers to work on several projects for different companies simultaneously, staff augmentation allows workers to devote all their time towards your project, which improves their focus and productivity and can result in better outputs. Plus, augmented employees will have a fresh perspective and may be able to bring new ideas, approaches, and solutions that can help get your project to the next level.
A Team Composed of The Right People
Whether you need someone with specific soft skills or extremely technical skills, you’ll be able to find someone that meets all your requirements when you work with a staff augmentation vendor. They can help you find talented workers with the skills you need to fill any gaps in your workforce and expand your team. What’s more, your full-time staff won’t worry about their job security, as they’ll know that these supplemental staff members are only working on a short-term basis.
Time Savings
Using IT staff augmentation services is a huge time saver. Not only does it eliminate the need to create job postings, interview countless candidates, and negotiate their salaries and benefits, but it also eliminates the need to manage vacations, sick pay, and taxes, giving you more time to focus on your business.
What Are the Challenges of Team Augmentation?
Team augmentation has plenty to offer, but it isn’t without challenges. You’ll want to be wary of:
Time Zone Barriers
If your augmented team members happen to be working remotely, you may experience time zone-related communication problems. Setting up a suitable meeting schedule can ensure you properly communicate with any remote augmented employees in other time zones.
Security Problems
Since the staff augmentation model involves integrating a third party into your company’s internal operations, you may face increased security threats. Make sure to regularly conduct security audits and follow protocols for obtaining signed DNAs from augmented staff members.
Poor Quality
Working with an unreliable IT staff augmentation vendor can mean inviting a low-quality developer onto your team. This can result in delays, security risks, and increased expenses if they can’t do their job properly, so make sure to properly vet your vendor and augmented team members before committing to anything.
Integration Difficulties
Joining a new work environment and adapting to a different company culture is challenging for new full-time hires and augmented staff members alike. It may take some time for them to fully integrate into their new role, but you can help ease the transition by helping them understand your internal business processes.
When To Use Staff Augmentation
You might use the staff augmentation model if:
- You want to quickly expand your in-house team: Finding locals with expertise in Internet of Things (IoT) technology, healthcare software development, and other niche areas of expertise the traditional way takes a lot of time. So, consider team augmentation if you have an in-house team and want to fill an expertise gap or get a product to market faster. When you work with a staff augmentation vendor, you only have to reach out, review their developers’ CVs, and interview possible hires.
- You need highly skilled people: If your project requires a high level of skill and you don’t have time to train a junior developer, work with an IT staff augmentation service.
- You don’t want to give up control: Outsourcing means letting a third-party handle nearly everything, but team augmentation gives you more control. Augmented team members will work with your in-house team and report directly to you, giving you total control over your project.
Staff Augmentation Trends
Outsourcing as a whole is on the rise in the IT industry. In 2019, the total market value of the IT outsourcing industry was over $92 billion, and it’s expected to reach $145 billion by 2027, though it may have an even higher value.
After all, this year, app outsourcing, one segment of IT outsourcing, reached a market value of $116 billion, and staff augmentation and other IT outsourcing market segments will likely experience similar levels of growth in the coming years as more companies explore non-traditional hiring options.
Expanding Your Team with Mejix
Staff augmentation enables companies to save time, cut costs, fill gaps in teams, and easily scale teams up or down when needed. However, it can do more harm than good if you don’t have the right staff or work with a high-quality vendor.
To ensure you receive experienced engineers and quality work, partner with Mejix. When you work with us, we can supplement your in-house team with qualified specialists at any time. Our programmers have been pre-screened and will be able to provide valuable contributions to your project without any additional training.
You’ll also save when it comes to Social Security payments, payroll services, and administration management. Contact us today to start expanding your team with Mejix.
