Currently, most tech companies do not use only static engineering teams when developing products. The rate of change in market conditions, product roadmaps, and a company’s requirements due to new technology is incredibly fast, making it difficult for CTOs and product leaders to determine the best way to raise/decrease their engineering capacity.
Staff augmentation has quickly become the most frequently used method of building your Development Team without committing to permanent hires; rather than using a long recruitment process to source development talent, you can source an engineer with the experience you require and have them join your team and contribute immediately to your development efforts.
With this model, the company can still control its projects while also tapping into specialized skill sets and flexible staff size. As the complexity of products increases, and the time required for product development decreases, the trend toward using staff augmentation to achieve a quicker time in the market will continue to grow.
This guide will provide you with an understanding of how staff augmentation works; a better understanding of why staff augmentation has become such a popular form of expanding your Development Team; and recommendations on how CTOs and product leaders can successfully implement staff augmentation into the development strategy.
What Is Staff Augmentation?
This model is used by organizations for a variety of reasons. Many will use it to fill gaps in their own skill sets or to speed up their development while they grow rapidly in terms of their product offerings. As an example, an organization might launch a new feature for its product and will need additional software developers for a couple of months but choose not to hire new employees permanently. Instead, the organization chooses to augment its’ staffing temporarily.
Staff augmentation differs from traditional outsourcing in the sense that with outsourcing, an organization transfers all control of the management and ownership of the entire project to the outsource company; however, with staff augmentation, the organization’s internal management team retains control over the entire project.
The staff augmentation approach is now gaining in popularity, especially in high technology industries that have very short cycles for product development relative to the competition level.
Why Staff Augmentation Is Growing in Popularity
There are a lot of reasons behind the rapid growth of staff augmentation as a solution for product development in today’s market. The need for flexibility has become so critical that companies must have the ability to build their engineering resources quickly and easily, without being tied up in long hiring processes.
Many companies today face challenges due to the fact that there are not enough qualified engineers in their local labor markets. Competing against larger tech companies presents major challenges in this area.
One way staff augmentation helps solve this problem is by giving organizations access to an international talent pool. When using staff augmentation, engineers can quickly enter the project teams and start adding value today instead of waiting through the long lead times associated with hiring employees. Furthermore, the complexity of software has grown tremendously over time. In order for modern applications to function properly, engineers must specialize in several different technical areas (e.g., cloud computing; web-based frameworks, data engineering, cybersecurity, etc.), and it is very uncommon for organizations to hire all the engineers needed for each technical area. Therefore, it is sometimes more productive for organizations to utilize temporary technical specialists than to hire permanent employees.
As a result, organizations that use staff augmentation can increase their flexibility and have access to specialized knowledge, as well as benefit from better cost efficiency.
Key Benefits of Staff Augmentation
Staff augmentation offers several advantages that make it attractive to CTOs and product leaders managing modern development teams.
Faster Team Scaling
Hiring permanent engineers can delay the development of new products or features due to recruiting cycles, offer negotiations, and onboarding programs that typically take months.
When using staffed augmented engineers, companies can accelerate their growth and add new team members within weeks using permanently employed external engineers who can start contributing to the project immediately.
The benefit of being able to hire staff quickly means that an organization’s ability to respond to market conditions and changes on their product roadmap is enhanced.
Access to Specialized Expertise
The technological landscape is changing at an increasingly fast pace. Companies may have project needs that require them to hire or utilize engineers that have experience in a particular framework, cloud platform, or programming language.
Staff augmentation allows companies to find experienced engineers that have already developed those specialized skill sets without needing to spend months doing on-the-job training to build those skills internally. The company can then quickly integrate a resource that has already been trained and is ready to support the technological projects with which the company is dealing.
Cost Efficiency
The extra costs associated with hiring a full-time employee include their salary, recruitment costs for hiring, providing them with benefits, building out office infrastructure, and committing to a long-term employee.
By moving to a staff augmentation strategy many of these costs are reduced or eliminated since companies only pay for how much time and expertise they need. This flexibility allows for an easier way to stay on budget for development projects and provide the required resources efficiently.
Reduced Hiring Risks
The disruption and cost implications of hiring the wrong engineer are both substantial. Staff augmentation helps mitigate this risk by allowing organizations to adjust team size based on changing project demands.
If there is a need for change in project requirements, or if an external engineer is unable to provide the support required for a project, they can complete their engagement without creating long-term staffing problems.
When Should Companies Use Staff Augmentation?
The model of staff augmentation has several advantages, but it is typically employed in specific situations. One example would be if a company finds itself suddenly having to ramp its development up due to an increase in demand for its products. In this case, new features or expanding into a new market will necessitate the need for more development resources than internal teams can provide on an immediate basis.
Also, when developing a product that has a highly technical component, staff augmentation may be the best option; developing machine learning capabilities or moving from on-premises computing to a cloud-based solution are two examples where internal teams do not have the ability to develop these capabilities.
Another reason many companies use staff augmentation is to plan for short-term development peaks that occur with newly launched products and major upgrades or large feature releases, as these types of events will generate higher than normal engineering capacity requirements for a very short period of time.
Finally, through strategic use of staff augmentation, companies can continue to meet their development needs while not permanently increasing their team size.
Staff Augmentation vs Traditional Outsourcing
Staff augmentation is not the same as outsourcing, even though they share some commonalities between the two models.
Outsourcing involves delegating an entire project or all the responsibilities for development to external vendors, who manage the team and perform the services required by a business, and ultimately deliver the project.
In contrast to outsourcing, staff augmentation combines external engineers into a company’s internal team. The engineers will work in conjunction with that team’s existing development processes.
By maintaining control over their product decisions and deciding how best to utilize outside technical expertise, companies are able to take advantage of both staff augmentation and outsourcing as a real alternative.
For many organizations looking for flexibility while also retaining their overall strategic oversight, using staff augmentation is a necessarily balanced method of utilizing both options.
How the Staff Augmentation Process Works
The process of implementing staff augmentation demands careful consideration and thorough communication. As it’s a flexible model, companies can work with external partners or build out an internal team through structured procedures to facilitate collaboration.
The initial step of implementing staff augmentation typically involves determining which of the staff currently on the development team lack the necessary skills for the technologies or roles needed. As such, CTOs and engineering managers will assess the technologies and roles to establish where they require assistance.
Upon completion of determining the needs, the next step is to identify an external resource provider who can provide experienced engineers who have the requisite skills to supplement the team.
Once the engineers are engaged, the next step is to incorporate them into the development team by integrating them into the workflow. For example, they will participate in team meetings and share access to code repositories so that they can work collaboratively on product development activities.
To be successful in executing a staff augmentation strategy, there needs to be consistent communication and clear, defined expectations for both internal and external team members.
Challenges of Staff Augmentation
There are Multiple advantages to using staff augmentation; however, there are always potential problems that need to be taken into account by organizations when determining the best way to augment their current staff. One such issue is communication and coordination problems. Many distributed teams work in different time zones and have different cultures. Without the use of the appropriate means of communication and/or clear processes for collaborating together, distributed teams will find it difficult to effectively collaborate.
Another challenge is the onboarding of these external engineers. External engineers must be onboard rapidly to have an understanding of the architecture, development practices, and/ or product vision of the organization’s engineering team.
Another important consideration is security-related issues. Companies using external engineers must make sure that these external engineers are following the company’s security policies and protecting sensitive data.
Leadership, clear documentation, and a well-defined workflow process will all help mitigate these challenges.
Best Practices for Successful Staff Augmentation
By adhering to the following practices, CTOs and product leaders can make the most of their outsourced staff augmentation program.
Consistent and thorough documentation will provide clarity to external engineers regarding the company’s architecture, coding standards, and protocols, resulting in much quicker onboarding.
Frequent and consistent communication is also critical. Conducting daily standup meetings, sprint reviews, and sprint planning provides a forum for external engineers to remain in sync with the rest of the team.
It is also helpful to include augmented engineers in all team processes (and not treat them as temporary workers); when developers feel like an integral part of the team, they tend to work more efficiently together, resulting in improved project delivery.
Finally, organizations that view staff augmentation as a collaborative relationship rather than a transaction usually yield better long-term results.
The Future of Staff Augmentation
As digitization proceeds through different sectors and more and more companies adopt new technologies, there is a growing need for flexible engineering groups. The number of products coming to market is increasing exponentially, which will require organizations to respond rapidly to these changes.
The strategy of using staff augmentation to ensure that an organization has the appropriate combination of speed, ability, and cost will be a critical element in accomplishing this.
The use of remote collaborative tools, worldwide talent networks, and cloud-based developing environments are all improving the performance of a company’s distributed engineering group.
CTOs and Product Leaders who are able to rapidly scale their development resources will enjoy a major technological edge in the very near future.
Conclusion
The trend towards staff augmentation has turned it into an increasingly popular approach for organizations creating modern digital products. It offers organizations a way of quickly increasing their engineering team’s capacity, giving them access to skills and technical capabilities that might not be available via traditional hiring methods.
CTOs and Product Leaders must select the appropriate partner for staffing augmentation, develop effective communication processes and integrate augmented engineering resources into the internal engineering team if they are to achieve a successful outcome from their use of augmented staffing services.
If executed properly, staff augmentation helps companies increase their pace of innovation, keep their development velocity, and remain agile by offering companies the ability to react rapidly to the changing needs of the market.
With the evolution of technology, companies who create a more agile workforce strategy will be able to deliver high-quality digital products and be placed in a stronger position to compete effectively in their respective marketplaces.
