Why IT Staff Augmentation is The Answer to Your Next Project

When project demands are increasing, businesses have to hire more specialists to bridge the gaps. There are two options available: hiring in-house specialists or leveraging staff augmentation services. In this article, we’ll define what staff augmentation is, explain its key benefits, and find out when you need to use it in your company. 

What Is IT Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is one of the outsourcing models when businesses hire external specialists to improve the working capacity of their in-house teams. It also allows them to quickly meet the demands for the current projects’ needs in skilled specialists. Businesses typically augment their teams with software developers, QA engineers, DevOps engineers, designers, business analysts, and others.

There are two types of staff augmentation depending on the period your project requires additional expertise:

• Short-term staff augmentation – it can be applied for periods of increased demand for specialists or when your in-house team is not available. 
• Long-term staff augmentation – it works best for big projects to fill skill gaps while cutting operational costs.

What Benefits Does It Provide?

When it comes to staff augmentation pros, it may bring diverse benefits to your project but all of them are related to cost-efficiency and faster recruitment. 

IT Staff Augmentation Takes Less Time Than Traditional Recruiting

Another significant benefit of IT staff augmentation is faster recruiting that allows you to streamline the development of your project and deliver it within the time frames you plan. Let’s explain why staff augmentation takes less time than recruiting in-house developers.

Access to the International Talent Pool

Being not bound by geographical limitations, staff augmentation allows you to hire staff from different locations, even if you live in a small town that lacks specialists with the expertise you need for your software development project. It’s focused on finding highly qualified staff, so you’ll get access to a wider talent pool when hiring specialists via an outsourcing company. Since such companies specialize in staff augmentation, they collect talents worldwide, offering you to interview only those candidates that potentially meet your project needs. Thus, you can significantly speed up recruiting by reducing time on finding and screening candidates’ CVs. 

Easier to Find Narrow-Focus Specialists

Your project may require specialists working in a particular technology area such as artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things or simply have strong skills in a less popular programming language. It’s time-consuming to find a specialist with a narrow focus, so it’s better to opt for staff augmentation as reliable outsourcing companies usually have a diverse international talent pool.

No Risks of Employees Leaving

When hiring specialists, you may not be sure whether the new employee will work for a full period or quit the job after a few weeks. When the latter option happens, you lose your time and money invested in recruitment, hiring, and onboarding processes. With staff augmentation, you hire employees for an extended period, thus ensuring that they’ll be working on your project during the required time. 

Skipping Most of the Recruitment Stages

The only part of the recruitment process you’re responsible for is final interviewing and selection. As mentioned above, staff augmentation significantly reduces the recruitment process as you have to choose from 1-2 candidates selected based on your project requirements by an outsourcing company.

IT Staff Augmentation Saves Money

As per Deloitte’s report, 59% of companies say cost reduction is their motivation for outsourcing their teams. Why is staff augmentation cheaper than extending your team with in-house specialists? Here are a few reasons:

• Fee charges are less than paying to in-house staff – there’s no need to pay salaries and taxes as you’ll only pay fees per hour. Moreover, if you need to scale your team for a short period, you eliminate the necessity to provide workload for a longer one because it’s harder to find a full-time employee for 2-3 months, for example.  
• Smaller operational costs – even though your team is extended you don’t have to arrange new workplaces and purchase equipment for new team members. All those costs are covered by fees for staff augmentation services.
• Flexibility in hiring employees for a short period – with staff augmentation, you can scale your in-house team whenever you need additional workforce and whatever period, be it one month or three years.
• No hidden costs – when hiring tech specialists via an outsourcing company, you also eliminate hidden costs such as health insurance, ongoing training, etc. Since an employee is hired full-time by an outsourcing company, you don’t have to bear those costs, too.

Why Choose IT Staff Augmentation for Your Next Project?

To leverage staff augmentation, you need to make sure that this engagement model suits your project. Below you’ll find several scenarios when staff augmentation is viable for your business:

• You need to satisfy temporary demand –  when you need to hire software developers for a short period, for example, you start extra projects, but your team isn’t available now, or when your in-house specialist left the project but you want to decrease the speed of the project delivery;
• Your project requires special skills – when it’s hard to find specialized skills in your area, staff augmentation is an excellent solution to hire narrow specialists within the shortest time frame.
• You need to increase output and meet deadlines – when you need to scale your team to meet a deadline, it’s crucial to assign the right resources. Augmenting your team with additional experts will be less time-consuming than finding specialists on your own.
• You need the flexibility to scale – when your project demands in expertise continuously change, staff augmentation will be the right solution to avoid worrying about investing a lot of time in hiring and administrative issues.

Thus, staff augmentation will work for your business if it really meets your project demands. Otherwise, you’d better opt for alternative options like hiring a dedicated team, for instance.