Using IT Staff Augmentation Services for Overcoming Tech-Talent Crunch

With next-gen technologies getting mainstream at a dizzying pace, markets worldwide are evolving rapidly. And a growing number of enterprises want to become a part of this transformation. Upgrading their offerings and operating models are some of the required to-dos for such companies. Adopting IT staff augmentation services for tech-talent hiring has become a global growth catalyst for organizations.

Especially in the post-pandemic world, there has been an increasing implementation and widespread acceptance of newer outsourcing models like team augmentation. More and more enterprises require instant availability of technical resources to speed up software development and enable faster time to market.

2020 cemented the long-debated point that the physical location of your workforce is not important. Businesses can hire external tech talent to enhance the software development lifecycle and reduce recruitment costs. They can effectively manage remote teams hired through the staff augmentation model and take products faster time to the marketplace with ease.

On top of that, IT staff augmentation services help businesses to bring expert technical skills for a long-term or short-term period. Along with the flexibility to scale up and down accordingly. Moreover, it maintains the continuous flow of software development and provides the flexibility to control operational costs.

Despite all such advantages led by augmenting your technical staff on a requirement basis, you might face wide-ranging challenges. Here, we will delve into three main challenges of staff augmentation and strategies to overcome them.

3 Challenges in IT Staff Augmentation Services & Tips to Solve Them

Although outsourcing and team augmentation markets have evolved dramatically over the past decade, some challenges remain. Augmenting your tech team without these challenges derailing your project needs an informed approach.

1. Finding the right talent amid growing competition

You are not the only one looking to augment experienced and well-versed tech talent for an upcoming development project. Even competitors running behind in the same race might overcome you. With the rapid expansion in the IT industry, the efficient skill gap is rising simultaneously. You and both competitors might be running after a talented workforce which is an extraordinary challenge. Finding the right tech team would not just accelerate your project but ensures the desired growth and profit.

However, there are few ways to overcome challenges.

• Background check:It is imperative to do a background check on new tech hiring for an upcoming or existing in-house project. Take a better look at the staff’s talent, experience, past work, references, and portfolio.
• Hire from an established partner:It is a better strategy to team up with an already established IT staff augmentation company to get on-demand resources. This is especially true when looking for expert IT assistance to become a helping hand in software development projects. With an established vendor, you will get an experienced choice of developers who already have the expertise and exclusive access to tools and technologies.
•  Stay clear of objective:Once you have decided to go with staff augmentation vendors to fulfill your external IT talent needs on a contractual basis, start filtering your options. This means assessing the reviews of available and top staff augmentation companies in terms of positive feedback, success stories, and even negative evaluations.

2. Getting the right set of communication skills

Maintaining clear and effective communication with the augmented staff can be a daunting task. Companies should pay special attention to seamless communication with the augmented staff working remotely in different time zones, having different language barriers, and cultural differences. Many times, all such roadblocks result in poor communication that ultimately affects the project’s performance and productivity. Moreover, communication conflicts lead to unclear expectations between the enterprise and the staff augmentation company.

The solution to improve this communication issue is to decide on better collaborative tools like teams, Slack, Zoom, GitHub, and more. Make sure to implement daily or weekly review sessions to let in-house members and the staff augmentation team be on the same page.

3. Ensuring smooth legal compliance

One of the major IT staff augmentation challenges enterprises face is negotiating and implementing a transparent contract. It leads to security issues and a loss of transparency between enterprise and vendor relationships. On top of that, it can have a devastating effect on your business projects in the long run, rapid increase in expenditures, loss of quality control, and information security loopholes.

The ideal way to address the legal issues is to create a transparent contact that considers all the relevant specifics that including the following:

• Showcase penalties in case of non-compliance with security terms.
• End-to-end terms of payment and invoicing.
• Liability clauses limit corporate responsibilities and warranty to safeguard the service quality.
• Data protection rules.
• Showcasing international governing laws if serving foreign clients and projects.

3 Ways to Make IT Staff Augmentation Services Optimal for You

Now, you know how to deal with staff augmentation challenges and ensure project quality to an optimum extent. Another learning is to adopt three ways at a time to make external IT resources work best for you.

• Select for limited project requirements: Staff augmentation is a better alternative for on-time project requirements. The external staffing members delicately working on a single project bring more efficiency, innovation, and speed. Also, ensure speedy deployment as per the strategic deadline.
• Identify unique skill set requirement: The search for external resources starts with finding the internal skill gap. You might be needing specialist skills that which is not there in your in-house team. With staff augmentation, find a specialized talent, who must be having a similar experience of working on a project like yours.
• Find the talent gap & fulfill: It is imperative to perform an in-depth analysis of software project requirements and your available team. At times of finding a resource gap, you get a clear idea of evaluating a particular professional from the augmented partner. Once identified, you can bring the desired resource on a short-term or long-term basis.

Final Note

Consider IT staff augmentation services for long-term and short-term external staffing requirements with ease. Rely on this hiring model to keep skilled people in place to ensure the timely deployment and success of software development projects. On the other side, keep track of the expenses of maintaining the augmented staff in proportion to your set budget.

Keep an eye on maintaining quality standards of external tech talent resourcing by implementing smooth communication, security, and scalability. Find the right people with the required technical skills from OrangeMantra, one of the leading staff augmentation companies.

FAQs

1. Why IT staff augmentation?

There are a few imperative reasons why businesses rely on staff augmentation services. It could be due to having an IT resource gap in the organization, a need for better expertise, specific talent, or even reducing the hiring cost. If your business has limited infrastructure, and capital, or even requires a more experienced software development approach, then augmenting staff is the right option.

2. How staff augmentation approach is best for business?

Staff augmentation is the fast and low-cost recruitment of external developers, designers, testers, and software engineers. To put it simply, it is divided into three models remote recruitment, on-site consulting, and individual or team specialist hiring. Thus, enterprises have the flexibility to hire dedicated developers to work on specific projects, and that too as per their choice of collaboration model.

3. What sort of sources to hire from the staff augmentation model?

By using the staff augmenting external model of talent hiring, you can include developers, UI/UX designers, testing experts, DevOps engineers, and other specialists. It depends on your resource requirement to hire any tech talent on a contractual basis from the staff augmentation company.