Is Software Staff Augmentation for You

When you find yourself in a situation when you need more resources for your software development project, or missing key skills necessary to bring your product to market, there are several ways to address it.

One of the easiest, most affordable solutions is to incorporate staff augmentation services into your workflow. Nearshore software outsourcing can help connect you to world-class talent located in neighboring or nearby countries. These team members often share similar cultural values and live in similar time zones — qualities that help ensure a streamlined workflow with your existing team.

People often talk about the advantages of team augmentation over IT outsourcing. In reality, though, both concepts are not self-exclusive: IT outsourcing is an umbrella term for a set of collaboration models used to facilitate software development. In essence, software staff augmentation is a collaboration model for extending existing software teams with extra talent or skills that are hard to find or are too expensive in the local market.

The staff augmentation model is well-suited for companies that already have an in-house team, but require particular expertise or a set of skills to complete a project successfully and faster than competitors. Team augmentation enables them to tap into global pools of highly qualified tech talent.

A staff aug company will help you determine the needs of your project to determine the right solution for your organization. You have direct contact with either project managers or lead developers and keep control of your project.

Staff augmentation allows you to budget your IT resources more efficiently since the majority of companies work on an hourly basis. Taking the fixed fee or estimate out of the contract lets you know how many hours and how much each hour is costing you versus unrealistic underbids and sales tactics to get your company to sign a contract.

Nearshore staff augmentation in Latin America, for instance, has dramatically grown in popularity for U.S. businesses. More companies are starting to adopt outsourcing, and the IT market is expected to increase by 7.7% from 2020 to 2027.

When it comes to the highly competitive IT market, it is increasingly difficult to retain corporate expertise. There is a risk of losing key specialists at the worst possible time.

It is thought that the level of tech specialists’ exhaustion is up to 60%, so it’s important to protect your business from the risk of losing needed specialists. How can you do this? You can do it by expanding your team.

Another reason why the augmented staff model is so popular is its cost-effectiveness. When it comes to choosing between the traditional recruitment method and an augmented team, you should know that the first one will last longer. According to Glassdoor, the usual recruitment process takes about 23 days on average.

When it comes to an augmented team, its members have a set of required competencies and skills. What's more, they are ready to get involved immediately. Your job as a business owner is to approve candidates and help them join your in-house team.

The extended team ensures business continuity and helps scale the project team. With an advanced team, you get more for less. But it has to be a well-thought-out step. Even if you have to deal with a crisis, an augmented team of professionals can help you solve your business problems quickly.

If you've never used software staff augmentation, we’ve compiled a list of ways that software staff augmentation can enhance and accelerate your software development process.

Find Specific Skills

Outsourcing gained popularity to help companies add important skills to their project. Through staff augmentation, you can identify specific needs and find people who excel at those tasks.

Development teams that enter your project via staff augmentation can leverage both internal and external resources. These people can lean on your internal process to guide their way or bring their external resources and knowledge to the table. This adds another layer of value to this model.

Reduce Costs

Staff augmentation is usually less expensive than hiring local talent. While it's difficult to predict how much money you'll save during the developmental process, many companies have made cost reduction their top outsourcing objective.

Bringing additional team members this way will complement the skills your team lacks. It will also bring in talent that could be costly for your company to acquire otherwise. This is key when the budget is a concern for your project.

Enhance Productivity

Rather than trying to solve your problems in-house, consider adding external staff who can help you increase productivity and get you closer to your goals.

For projects where you need a bit more control over your team, staff augmentation is ideal. When you choose staff augmentation, you have more say in how the project gets done.

Effectively Manage your Workload

As you develop a project, the problem of scaling always seems to be looming. Depending on the scope of the project, it may not be financially feasible to hire local IT staff members. Experienced companies make it easy to match external talent to help support your current IT team.

Conclusion - Is Software Staff Augmentation for You?

Software staff augmentation is an effective way of bridging a skills gap and bringing many projects to fruition. While many companies are successfully using it to their advantage, others are still relying on local talent pools, which is closely associated with a long time to hire and high costs, and are reluctant to explore alternative ways that can help accelerate their software project kickoff and improve quality, saving time and money.

The main reason for the growing popularity of staff augmentation services these days is what they bring to the table. Your team works on your project following what you outline and plan for. Since you are directing their activities, you have to remain involved in all aspects of the project to ensure it is completed within the timeframes, quality, and budget that you have mapped out and planned for.