Team Augmentation 101: Elevate & Empower Your Team
The pandemic has forever changed the dynamics of remote work. Today, more than ever, it is logical to expand the capabilities of your team with remote qualified resources. And team augmentation services are exactly what provides the desired balanced result.
But what is team augmentation? Why is it so popular? And is it a real solution for your business and its pain points? Let us guide you through the answers to all of these questions.
What Team Augmentation is?
Team augmentation, also known as staff augmentation, is the practice of expanding in-house teams by injecting outsourced IT-workforce. This may be one individual engineer to cover a skill gap in the local development team, or maybe few specialists collaborating with in-house workers, or even an entire remote team dedicated to your specific needs.
With this engagement approach, you may individually pick people based on your company and project requirements. In this model your staff augmentation service provider manages all administrative details, allowing you to collaborate with your expanded team in the same manner that you do with your in-house engineers.
Market prospects for IT outsourcing
As technology drives digital change across all industries, there is no end in sight to the chronic shortage of tech talent. The number of unfilled software development jobs in the US alone is estimated at over 900,000 and is projected to rise to 1.2 million over the next five years.
With demand expected to rise further over the next decade, finding affordable talent will remain a challenge, according to a Everest Group study, which found that 86% of organizations believe a lack of tech talent is a major barrier to achieving business outcomes.
In 2019 year, according to Accelarance 2019-2022 report, 61% of US recruiters cited hiring developers as their most difficult, time-consuming, and expensive challenge.
There are real challenges finding and integrating software teams for trending initiatives:
- Cloud computing (through platforms such as Google GCP, Azure and AWS)
- Robotic process automation (RPA)
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Machine learning IoT (the Internet of Things)
Which parts of the US are suffering most from a lack of software developers? This new index highlights counties and states with the biggest gap between demand and supply. The most acute shortages are concentrated in the Midwest, while premier technology hubs such as Silicon Valley have a higher supply of local talent attracted by the concentration of hightech employers.
The trend illustrated here reveals opportunities for companies to utilize outsourced development teams to beat the pervasive developer drought across the US.
According to ISG Momentum® Market Trends & Insights Geography Report, In 2019, 57 percent of all G2000 companies had at least one significant outsourcing contract.
Globally, outsourcing and shared services (OSS) has grown to become a mega multi-billion dollar industry. 2021 year alone worldwide spend on OSS operations is estimated to have reached US$ 688.4 billion. Within the next 5 years the outsourcing and shared services industry will exceed US$ 1.0 trillion.
This all points to a long-term rising market trend for IT outsourcing and staff augmentation.
Benefits of Team Augmentation
Team augmentation frequently delivers not just a weight off the shoulders of in-house workers, but also a major improvement in time to market – which might be the difference between a software development project’s success and failure.
Depending on their individual goals, organizations opt to collaborate with augmented teams for a variety of reasons. Let’s look at some of the most typical reasons for team augmentation:
Flexibility
Hiring new engineers the traditional method takes time (particularly the recruiting process), money, and doesn’t leave you with much leeway in establishing your new team. After all, you can’t expect to hire every single specialist in your firm full-time.
That’s where a more adaptable team augmentation service comes in handy, since it provides limitless alternatives. You may scale your development team up or down as the project advances by adding, removing, or swapping members as needed.
If your existing team encounters an unforeseen problem while working on a project, you may immediately add a new member who will be in charge of resolving the problem.
Access to a vast talent pool
Another significant benefit of staff augmentation is the ability to tap into a big pool of expertise. You may access a whole network of software engineers rather to simply those you’ve previously recruited or those who live nearby.
This means you can locate the ideal IT talent for your project, regardless of skill set or experience level. If your project is extremely complicated, you may form a whole remote team to collaborate with your internal developer teams and project managers.
Cost savings
When compared to hiring new employees or managing an outsourced business, deploying augmented teams may typically save money and time. If you don’t have the funds to hire a permanent employee right away, this might be a clever method to get the same resource for a shorter period of time.
Resource adaptability
Scaling up and down employee numbers may be a time-consuming and complex task. Recruiting is frequently resource-intensive, and moving individuals out might take as long as the project itself. However, having augmented team members on demand makes it easy to adjust team size depending on current business demands.
Improved output quality
Team augmentation enables the company to hand-pick the finest resources to participate to the project, which can significantly improve the job quality. Having a fresh pair of eyes to solve problems, as well as identify new procedures and best practices, may often benefit the entire team.
Progress visibility
Communication with the company is typically better and faster when development is kept in-house. It makes it easy for the team to keep stakeholders informed of progress, allowing them to resolve any issues that occur.
Closer alignment with company goals
Traditional outsourcing is always fraught with the possibility of misinterpreting the company’s vision, culture, or aims. Having a staff that is well established in the organization and knows it well can help to guarantee that the project stays on track with the goals of the company.
Increased effectiveness (with reduced organizational expenses)
Staff augmentation may assist boost your team’s efficiency, speed up their work, and make resolving any project concerns more easier. Furthermore, because you just need to engage engineers for each project or job, there is no need for extensive or expensive training and onboarding.
Furthermore, because you will be recruiting employees who already have the relevant knowledge, you will not have to worry about presenting the fundamentals to them or waiting for them to settle in. In the long term, this may save a lot of time and money.
Team Augmentation vs Software Outsourcing vs Managed Services
So, when it is better to you use team augmentation model? The main distinction is who manages the work. You are in charge of the work with staff augmentation. In the case of outsourcing, this is the provider.
When entire project is outsourced, the provider is in charge of the end result. The primary benefit of outsourcing for your company is that you can offload the entire burden of a project to a third party.The other side of the coin is that you lose control.
Overall, software outsourcing is an option if you lack the capacity or technical knowledge to manage the work internally. However, if you want to be more flexible, you should consider staff augmentation or managed services.
Managed services are essentially a hybrid of IT team augmentation and software outsourcing. The difference is that managed services are a more permanent deal. Because the provider does not commit to an end-result in advance, the arrangement is more flexible.
However, with a managed service agreement, the provider is still in responsible of overseeing the job, unlike with staff augmentation. As a result, managed services typically have greater costs than team augmentation. You also have less control and are more dependent on the service provider and his capacity to assemble a strong squad.
So if you don’t have the resources or technological know-how to handle the task but still want to maintain some level of flexibility, managed services are an attractive choice. However, staff augmentation is the best option if you want to be able to manage a specially recruited team on your own.
When is team augmentation a good idea?
When should you employ staff augmentation? This is a question you may be asking yourself right now. The fact is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution because it is dependent on your individual demands and company goals.
Before selecting whether to add another developer to your existing team, you should conduct some study on your needs, goals, and expectations. That being stated, here are a few circumstances in which staff augmentation may be beneficial:
#1 When you need to immediately boost capacity
Staff augmentation is a good approach to swiftly add more remote engineers to a team. This might be useful if you need to ramp up for a new project or if you run into an unanticipated problem that has to be solved right away. When managing a project with a tight deadline, having an extended team working alongside your in-house team might give the extra resources required to complete the task.
#2 When you require access to developers with certain expertise
Staff augmentation services might be an excellent choice if you need a certain skill set that you don’t have in-house. The remote talent pool is large, whether you require an AI specialist, a web developer, or a QA engineer. Staff augmentation also enables you to bring in an expert to assist without permanently employing them.
For example, if you want Python programming assistance but do not have the funds to engage a full-time developer, you may bring in an enhanced staff member.
#3 When you want competence in a certain field
Staff augmentation might also be beneficial if you need to add someone with specific knowledge to your local team. This can be useful if you are working on a new project that necessitates knowledge in a certain field or if your developers are experiencing difficulties with an unforeseen project roadblock.
#4 When you want further assistance
Staff augmentation can also be employed to offer developers with additional assistance. This can be useful during peak times, when working on a huge project, or when your local staff is engaged with other responsibilities. Having a separate team working alongside your primary one may assist relieve stress and ensure that the project is completed.
#5 When you need to quickly scale up
If you have a sudden increase in workload due to a new client or a particularly successful product launch, or if you don’t have the office space or funds to recruit a complete team, staff augmentation may be quite beneficial. You can almost instantly form a dedicated team to assist you with your core business duties and collaborate with your local staff, allowing you more time to manage the burden and finally locate someone to work full-time.
Team Augmentation difficulties
So far, everything seems wonderful, right? Staff augmentation services are an excellent option for businesses that need to quickly add skills or knowledge to their in-house teams. However, staff augmentation is not without difficulties that must be solved if it is to be successful.
The following are some challenges you may encounter while adopting this strategy to increase your team.
#1 Smooth Integration
Integration is one of the most difficult aspects of augmentation. Getting everyone on the same page while adding new team members may be tricky. That’s why it’s critical to start with solid communication and teamwork – appointing someone from the firm to act as managing director is a smart option.
It might also be beneficial to have a plan in place for integrating new team members. This might include training, onboarding, regular communication with the project manager, or anything else that makes remote engineers feel at ease.
#2 Cost
Team augmentation might be a more expensive alternative than other personnel solutions. This is because you are effectively employing a professional or a specialized team of specialists. However, as compared to employing freelancers (who can be inexpensive, but their job quality may suffer as a result, and they may quit at any time) or in-house workers, staff augmentation is the most cost-effective alternative.
Staff augmentation may be prohibitively expensive if you are operating on a shoestring budget. As a result, you should consider if it is worth it in the long term to spend a little more money on hiring an expert for your project right away rather than dealing with issues later when the expense of bringing the project back on track may be considerably greater.
#3 Lack of control
With staff augmentation, you are effectively delegating some project duty to another party. This is because you will be working with people you are unfamiliar with.
It’s critical to understand the distant individual’s or team’s methods and how they operate, as well as their appreciation for your corporate culture. Only then will you be able to keep the project on track and achieve your goals.
Regardless of the hurdles, it all comes down to selecting the proper team to work with. Staff augmentation may be a game changer for your organization if you choose a crew with strong communication and teamwork skills, as well as the experience you want, all for a reasonable price.
How Mirigos can help you with team augmentation
As you can see, adding a new person to your team through augmentation is not as simple as hiring the first software engineer you come across. Staff augmentation can only assist you if you work with developers who have the necessary expertise and abilities and whom you can trust with your project even if you do not operate in the same area.
So, why don’t you contact us at Mirigos? We’ve worked on and successfully completed hundreds of projects, ranging from small and simple to large and complicated, including several teams. We can definitely declare that we know energy and utilities, electric cars, and bespoke software development like the back of our hands.
If your primary team is struggling and your project is suffering as a result of excessive turnover or a shortage of software engineers with the necessary skill sets, we most likely know just what you need to get your project back on track.
We deal with over 100 software developers and have over 20 000 people in our network, so there’s a high possibility we know exactly who you’re looking for, regardless of the skill or experience levels you require.