What Is IT Staff Augmentation? Everything You Should Know

The global IT services outsourcing market is growing at a fast pace, reaching a value of USD 639.59 billion in 2022. Forecasted to grow with a CAGR of 8% from 2023 to 2028, it is evident that businesses are gradually depending on external IT talent to meet their staffing demands.

Whether it is the management of complex projects or filling skills gaps, IT staff augmentation offers flexibility and scalability that traditional hiring doesn’t have.

Let’s get into the details of what IT staff augmentation is and why it has become a popular option for the modern business world.

Staff augmentation in IT is a staffing strategy that allows companies to hire external IT professionals for projects or workloads that exceed their internal capacity. It is a distinct way compared to the conventional outsourcing solutions where the external staff is working alongside the management with the existing team for greater collaboration and productivity.

Key features of IT staffing augmentation include:

Some myths are that the augmented staff won’t blend well into the internal team or the hiring process is too complex. Despite the problems, these can be softened by clear communication, systematized onboarding, and a credible partner who will find appropriate talent.

On the other hand, IT staff augmentation is the most flexible staffing model that is able to respond to the rapid changes in the market.

The concept of IT Staff Augmentation includes the idea of the rental of skilled professionals or employees as per the requirement of the organization for the best outcomes.

The procedure of IT staff augmentation, as such, is very straightforward, articulating the business needs, finding the right resource, and integrating the new talent into the current team. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how it typically works:

First of all, it is essential to outline what you need. For example, are you lacking in a particular niche skill or need additional help to overcome tight deadlines? Clearly defining these needs right at the start will mean that you will have clearly enumerated the exact skills and number of professionals to hire.

Choose a staffing firm that is a prominent player in augmenting the information technology sector. They’ll search through their database for people who are highly skilled and will do the screening, narrowing down the list and sending you a list of those that match your standards.

Review the shortlisted candidates. You can be involved in performing interviews and technical assessments to measure the employees’ skills and aptitude with required characteristics and defined tasks and goals.

The process of hiring the right talent doesn’t end with hiring. Instead, the process continues with onboarding. Equip them with your resources, in tandem with your team introduction, and the workflow overview. Successful communication and properly paving the way for transition are of great significance in order to have a smooth transition process.

Your amplified workforce will directly report to the management as they work closely with your in-house team to handle specific issues. Maintain constant communication; control the accomplishments to keep up the work speed and the quality.

With the completion of the project, the contract ends but can be renegotiated if the workload for support of the firm and the appearance of new projects is necessitated.

By implementing IT staff augmentation, you achieve several benefits that lead to your project’s success and allow your company to be more successful. Here’s how staff augmentation helps businesses.

Staff augmentation in IT enables you to build up or downscale the number of people you have based on the project scope. Such flexibility enables you to solve a certain skills shortage while the project is ongoing without creating a larger in-house team over the year.

With IT staff augmentation, it becomes possible to hire highly specialized experts who are unavailable at your company. It is this benefit that becomes an important aspect when working on specific narrow projects that need their own unique ways of doing things.

Staff augmentation diminishes the high costs of full-time recruitment and onboarding. You achieve that by the use of a pay-as-you-go model instead of spending the entire budget for services you do not need at the same time you get high-quality experts.

Inviting outside specialists is a way to catch up on projects because they come already equipped with a set of skills and the industry’s best practices. Moreover, this has the effect of speeding up the process and shortening development cycles.

The administrative issues of employment like the provision of benefits, payroll, and compliance will be handled by the service provider hence the payroll overhead will be reduced.

Sometimes, the external talent can take your in-house team through sharing the best practices and industry knowledge they possess, which in turn improves their skills. This exchange of ideas further enriches the internal culture due to the more creative and valuable workforce.

Outsourcing the said tasks to a third party allows your in-house team to concentrate on the strategic activities that require more attention and effort. In this way, better focus and productivity are achieved.

The involvement of external pros will enable them to see and fix possible issues before they cause problems such as project security and vulnerability. Hence, external involvement is the key to a successful project.

IT staff augmentation comes with its own set of challenges. Here are these:

Bringing an external person into an established team can be a difficult task. They could have a unique way of working, speaking, or handling things that doesn’t match your way of working, and which will take time to adapt and even longer to get used to.

Solution

It is often challenging to sustain a uniform quality level for employees, as well as an extended labor force. A misalignment of standards or lack of clarity about what is expected of you might produce work that isn’t at the level you want it to be.

Solution

Outsourcing IT tasks affords you the opportunity to allow third parties to view your systems and data which is by default, prone to security breaches.

Solution

In case your organization is over-relying on the augmented staff to handle the tasks, you may find that your in-house staff lacks essential skills just in case your augmented staff is unavailable.

Solution

Collaborating with your in-house team and outside staffing may give rise to incoherent and confusing communication which, in turn, may result in a project delay or errors.

Solution

Working with augmented staff particularly, across international borders may land your business to challenges which might be laws or tax issues that differ from one region to another.

Solution

Identifying when you should be using the staff augmentation IT model for your business can enable you to make the most out of this strategy.

The expertise gap that your in-house team may develop can be quickly filled by hiring expert professionals and ensuring your projects will be completed in no time.

If you are juggling too many tasks with deadlines drawing near, you can deal with this situation by bringing in additional qualified personnel and accelerating the process without affecting the quality.

When a project is short-term and doesn’t really merit long-term engagements, staff augmentation offers an agile solution that will allow you to bring in the needed expertise for the life of the project only.

Companies working on a project-specific basis gain this capability by paying only for resources when they need them for projects at a low cost.

Your in-house team could have a number of projects going on at once hampering the team’s performance. Through staff augmentation, your employees will be saved from excessive burdening which will significantly contribute to the preservation of their morale and productivity.

Globalization-driven augmentation in business operations is an attractive alternative, offering local expertise and know-how to companies that seek to expand into different regions without incurring the entire overhead costs of setting up a local office.

Staffing augmentation lets you try different types of skills and project management ways without commitments that take too long to be realized.

IT Staff augmentation surfaces as a potent remedy for companies grappling with specific skill shortages, productivity hiccups, or pursuing dynamism. Learning about its advantages, limits, and practical ways to apply this model can help you conduct your project effectively in a more flexible way.

When you are looking around for IT staff augmentation, you have to make sure that you agree to your requirements, you select the right partner and you build an environment that is collaborative and the external talent can be integrated smoothly. This involves reductions of risks along with optimum results depending on whether the project is short-term or long-term innovation works.

Specifically, this skill model offers your company the ability to grow fast and to get the needed expertise without high overhead costs, and it gives you the edge to compete in the crowded tech setting.