What Is IT Staff Augmentation? 5-Step Process, Use Case, Benefits and Challenges, Tips

Need senior software developers but don’t want to worry about hiring, payroll, and retention? Staff augmentation lets you engage them from the opposite side of the continent and say goodbye as soon as their work is done. Perfect. You can save up to 50% on expenses and scale a team up or down when needed. More and more businesses turn to staff augmentation as the most competitive staffing solution currently available in the IT world.

This blog post helps you dive deeper into the topic. You will explore:

• Staff augmentation meaning.
• Five signs you need this model.
• Staff augmentation example: our process at Sombra.
• Values and challenges that staff augmentation brings.
• Selecting a staff augmentation company: four factors to consider.

What is staff augmentation?

Staff augmentation is a type of engagement model. It enables you to work with external professionals without hiring them. For instance, IT staff augmentation lets you involve tech talent in your development team for a project.

Other ways to define the model are team augmentation, talent augmentation, and team extension.

When to choose IT staff augmentation services?

Want to make sure this engagement model is suitable for you? Here are five indicators to consider:

You want to reduce costs 

Hiring in-house employees involves insurance, superannuation, commissions, and workplace equipment expenses. Choosing a staff augmentation engagement model will help you reduce these costs. When you sign a contract, a service provider handles payroll budgeting. It also manages salary processing, recruitment, and dismissal procedures. If a person leaves, the company provides a replacement.

You require more tech talents

Your internal development team needs more specific expertise. For instance, you look for a tech talent specializing in Python and working with Flask or Django. You may also need a software engineer proficient in Angular and JavaScript web development tools. Software team augmentation lets you bridge the skill gap and hire highly skilled software developers, regardless of the time zone or location.

You strive to show short-term results

Are you facing a deadline crunch? Consider this scenario: You have a crucial six-month window to develop your product before the most lucrative quarter begins. Unfortunately, your Python expert has departed, leaving a void in your team. While searching for a replacement, your recruiter estimates it might take around three months to find the perfect candidate. Rest assured, we can assist you in expediting the process and ensuring you don’t miss out on the opportune quarter.

With staff augmentation, your recruiter doesn’t spend that time hiring full-time software engineers. Instead of it, you engage that specialist within a month or two.

You want to scale up or down your team as needed

You don’t sign employment contracts. A service provider handles the hiring, compensation, and termination of staff members. Staff augmentation allows you to replace specialists without worry. You engage them on a project-by-project basis and pause the collaboration when necessary.

You consider a long-term offshore partnership 

You can start working with several software engineers to decrease inconvenience in offshoring your project. It allows you to evaluate your collaboration’s quality, cost, communication, and cultural aspects. Once you set up a long-term partnership, you receive enhanced business and development integration.

Staff augmentation process at Sombra

IT staff augmentation is one of the preferred engagement models at Sombra. The following steps ensure the success of a client’s projects.

Identifying business needs

We clarify your project vision, requirements, timescale, budget, and business objectives. Also, we learn about your development approaches. For instance, our Chief Technology Officer, Yuriy Nakonechnyy, and his team of Competence Leads discuss your preferences. For example, preferences for software development, DevOps, testing & quality assurance, and UX design.

Then, we determine a list of requirements for new candidates. We suggest arranging a call between our Competence Lead and your technical specialist. They determine what skills you expect from tech talent, as well as what extent and behavioral patterns you seek. This information allows us to find the most qualified tech talent efficiently.

The primary goal at this stage is to build trust. As a result, you feel confident about the success of your staff augmentation project. So, you can switch between multiple business projects without stress.

It’s not just about skills, but also about diving deeper into client needs and tailoring our services, — Yuriy Nakonechnyy believes.

Assessing the specialists

Our resource managers check the availability of internal specialists among over 250 software engineers. Then, they send pre-selected profiles to you to choose the most appropriate candidates.

If there is no match in the internal talent pool, recruiters look for external tech talents. There are over 200 000 specialists in Ukraine and 150 000 in Colombia. To find tech talents efficiently, recruiters use their candidate database. They conduct interviews to check candidates’ hard and soft skills. Then — send pre-selected profiles to you.

Also, recruiters can reach out to our subcontractors for available specialists.

Interviewing candidates

When you choose the most appropriate profiles, you conduct interviews with candidates. They can go through different interview stages if needed. For example, you can give a coding challenge as a zero or a first-round interview.

Our clients approve candidates after one interview in 90% of cases.

Onboarding specialists for a project

We assign a project coordinator without charge to ensure your satisfaction with our work. They coordinate communication between specialists involved in your project. The project coordinator also handles the financial and legal aspects.

We schedule a meeting with you to introduce the project coordinator. Together, we create a communication plan and determine the next steps.

Optionally, you can work with one of our project managers for an additional charge. They can help with all aspects of project and team management.

Managing a project

Software engineers work under your management and within your processes. They focus only on your project. You can increase or decrease the number of specialists with 1-2 months’ notice. Every month, the project coordinator invoices you for several working days. Also, they manage software engineers’ vacations and sick leaves.

This flow of staff augmentation service enables us to build reliable and long-term relationships with our clients. An example — a seven-year partnership with one of the world’s top 15 banks.

Let’s dig deeper into the factors that make this collaboration effective.

Sombra staff augmentation case 

Sombra started collaborating with the bank in 2015. At that time, the client needed Java and JavaScript engineers. During the next eight years, the development team expanded to over 50 talents and delivered over 30 projects.

We followed these principles to ensure successful software development:

Adaptability. Our client wanted a development team that could adapt to dynamic requirements. As a result, we had planning sessions every quarter to set priorities and determine direction.

Immersion in the client’s business. We organized annual on-site trips for engineers and bi-annual trips for managers to customer locations.

Take advantage of time zone differences. The time gap between North America and Ukraine allows us to deliver almost continuous development and technical support.

Long-term involvement helps the customer to reduce costs. We increased interaction between development teams, which led to higher performance.

Want to engage tech talents for your staff augmentation project? Contact us to choose from more than 250 software engineers at Sombra.

Benefits of IT staff augmentation

Team augmentation provides numerous opportunities for your business. In the next sections, we explore pros and cons of this engagement model.

It is cost-effective 

Finding and hiring an employee with the needed skills is pricey, stressful, and time-consuming. But by turning to a staff augmentation pricing model, you can find the best talents you need precisely when you need them, regardless of the location.

There are a variety of choices from hourly rates ranging from:

• North America — $77.
• Western Europe — $75.
• Latin America — $61.
• Eastern Europe — $35-50.

It makes scaling your business easier

You can hassle-free increase or decrease the number of people working on your project. What’s more, technical staff augmentation lets companies handle risks better. You can deal with unexpected workload issues, complex tasks, and other unforeseen events faster and more effectively. When you have augmented staff ready to jump in and manage the avalanche of tasks coming your way, it’s much easier to balance the in-house team workload. After all, overstressed employees rarely show their best results.

It provides wide access to specialized skills

You do not restrict yourself to working solely with employees from the United States or Canada.  Offshore staff augmentation allows you to find software developers with a robust skill set from anywhere. Or you can find a service provider with expertise in a particular domain, such as fintech.

It maintains quality 

With software team augmentation, you engage full-time employees who dedicate their time only to your project. Within a fixed time frame, they provide excellent software development. You handle the project management process and let the experts do their job.

IT staff augmentation challenges

Staff augmentation is not a cure-all. This model has a lot of advantages and can rescue your business when implemented skillfully and timely. Yet, we want to be honest regarding this approach’s disadvantages. We also suggest how to deal with or prevent them from emerging.

Time zone difference

It becomes a challenge when the development team ends their work at 2 PM your time. Companies even set up meetings at night to deal with a huge time zone difference. To avoid this, you and the company can devise a plan to make collaboration comfortable. Another option is to ask the company if they have software engineers in your time zone.

For instance, we have 20 clients in North America, such as big banks and logistics providers. The overlap of 3-4 hours allows them to receive continuous development.  Due to the time zone differences, we are able to resolve issues prior to the client’s daily meeting.

If our client prefers working in the same time zone, our Colombian team is available. We have an office in Medellin, one of the biggest cities in Colombia.

Lack of communication 

For example, engineers need better English skills. They don’t understand technical details, and you spend extra time describing your problem. Or you experience situations when software engineers don’t share their thoughts and ideas. You expect active listening, feedback, and questions, but you hear mostly “yes” or “okay” instead.

To overcome this challenge, select a company that offers English and communication courses for its employees. Another good indicator is when a company periodically sends a survey to measure your communication satisfaction.

Cultural difference

The “yes culture” is one of the biggest obstacles to sharing ideas and visions in software development. A service provider must combine openness to new technology solutions and the ability to debate which option is best.

Managerial bottlenecks

Managing both in-house employees and augmented staff successfully requires some extra specialists. You should be able to balance both kinds of team members equally well. To succeed in doing so, make sure to settle all the terms and conditions of cooperation with the augmented staff before the work starts.

If your team has some unsolved internal issues that slow down and decline productivity, an augmented staff employee will also be affected by these issues. To get the most out of staff augmentation, polish your business processes first.

Selection of service vendor

Navigating through these challenges requires finding the perfect service vendor. However, this task can be quite tricky. For instance, you might opt for the cheapest company on your list only to discover that their developers lack assertiveness. On the other hand, choosing a service provider with a big name might lead you to encounter numerous bugs in their developer’s code.

How to choose the right IT staff augmentation company

In the next section, you will receive five tips on how to find the right service vendor. You can follow them to minimize risks.

Discover clients reviews

Don’t limit yourself to reading the company’s website and case studies. In addition, you can find products this company worked for and evaluate them. Or you can explore what users write about that product.

Another way is to talk with previous company’s clients. Alternatively, you can visit a company’s profile on Clutch. That platform verifies each review from clients.

Check employee’s reviews 

For instance, you can check profiles of Ukrainian staff augmentation companies on DOU. This platform also provides a detailed rank of the best places to work. Employee reviews help you identify possible challenges in your collaboration. In addition, you observe how a company responds to negative feedback and cares about its reputation.

You can also use open data platforms when looking for a service provider in Ukraine. For example, YouControl allows you to review data from 180 official resources.

Talk with a chief technology officer 

This conversation helps you understand whether a company’s chief technology officer pays attention to aspects of the development process. Our Chief Technology Officer Yuriy Nakonechnyy recommends discussing these points:

• What “quality” means for you.
• Describe the help you need.
• What the most challenging part of your project is.
• Shiny new technology you want to try.

Yuriy Nakonechnyy says that being direct and open is critical for building relationships with clients. “A 10-minute call could save several back-and-forth lengthy emails and confusions,” he believes.

Want to discuss your staff augmentation project? Contact us to share your business objectives and requirements.

Verify if a company meets industry standards 

For example, the company received ISO 27001 certification, the world’s leading information security standard. Or it has an Information Security Officer who is responsible for cybersecurity. Additionally, you can ask whether the company has encrypted hard drives and protected internal data.

Don’t hesitate to ask about code practices. For instance, if the development team uses General coding practices and standards for front-end and back-end development. You can also inquire about tests the team applies for critical parts of applications. Additionally, ask if the development team has code reviews from experienced engineers.

Moreover, find out how the company saves development time. For example, if developers write automation tests using Python, JS, and TS language with Cypress, Selenium, or Playwright. Or whether they perform Integration of the automated test cases into CI/CD pipelines.

Types of IT staff augmentation services: which one to choose?

Choosing the right type of IT staff augmentation services is the next step. You can discuss these options with your service provider.

On-site staff augmentation

This term refers to the practice when software developers work in your office. Your role is to prepare workspaces and equipment and help new team members adapt. The service provider organizes their journey, finds apartments, and handles expenses and travel procedures.

This type is the best option if you want:

• Face-to-face interaction across the development team.
• To overcome the challenges of time zone differences.
• To minimize risks when engaging tech talents from war zones.

Remote staff augmentation

The primary purpose is access to a global talent pool. You can compare the quality-to-cost ratio between several candidates and choose the most suitable.

Here is how to define whether remote staff augmentation is what you need:

• Reducing expenses is your top business priority.
• You take advantage of working in different time zones.
• You want to find tech talent across the globe.

Team-based staff augmentation

It refers to engaging the entire development team. For instance, you need back-end and front-end developers, quality assurance engineers, designers, and DevOps. The service provider finds and manages all these specialists together.

It is the right choice when:

• You don’t have time to find and manage specialists together.
• You want the development team to work in a one time zone.
• You wish to avoid cultural challenges between specialists from different countries.

Staff augmentation vs other models

Need to clarify how IT staffing augmentation differs from outsourcing or managed services? Here is a comparison with five other models.

Staff augmentation vs outsourcing

Outsourcing is a practice of delivering a project completely by a third party. While staff augmentation is an engagement model that engages external professionals as a part of an in-house team.

Staff augmentation vs managed team

Managed team refers to a model where a service provider takes responsibility for a client’s project. By contrast, staff augmentation is an engagement model where a client provides workload and manages a project.

Staff augmentation vs consulting

A consulting firm has a pool of consultants that they already work with. Typically, those consultants are contractors, not hired employees. By contrast, a staff augmentation company employs talents for your project.

Staff augmentation vs in-house staffing

With a staff augmentation model, you engage specialists without hiring them. You sign a contract with a service vendor, and it takes care of the employment and

dismissal process. On the other hand, if you choose to hire an employee through in-house staffing, you will be responsible for managing all aspects of the process, such as handling their payroll, invoices, and benefits.

Staff augmentation vs independent contractors

When you hire a contractor directly, you handle the hiring and dismissal process. However, with a staff augmentation model, you don’t have to deal with it.

Staff augmentation can be applied to all businesses, big or small, local or international. It can help companies solve hiring issues, save costs, and boost productivity.

To reap all the benefits offered by the staff augmentation model, you have to be able to manage the mixed project team well. It is also necessary to have well-established business operation processes before considering staff augmentation. But if your business has great growth potential and your team consists of highly skilled technical professionals, the staff augmentation model could be the right fit for you.