Recruiting in-house IT professionals is not an efficient, cost-effective way to amplify your tech stack, especially when you need to hire a developer or expert with a unique set of skills for a certain project. You need a team player who can instantly become an extension of your in-house team and fill the skill gaps as soon as possible. 

Partnering with a staff augmentation company enables organizations to drive innovation and gain competitive advantage by hiring highly experienced and skilled IT talent remotely. It allows them to expand their in-house team by outsourcing the required talent and staying agile.

Recently, companies of all sizes have been opting for staff augmentation services to cut costs and delivery time while improving software quality and innovating sustainably. In this blog, we’ll guide you through the staff augmentation model, its benefits, and how to choose the right IT staff augmentation company.

What is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation refers to the practice of temporarily outsourcing employees to supplement an in-house team for a specific project or timeframe. It involves contracting external staff who work as dedicated developers, designers, or other specialists under the client’s management.

In a staff augmentation model, the client interviews and selects candidates based on their skills and experience. Once hired, these temporary workers integrate into the client’s team and operate from the client’s office or remotely. The client manages and assigns tasks to the augmented staff.

Companies leverage staff augmentation services to ramp up projects quickly, fill skill gaps, meet temporary business needs, access niche talent, and maintain flexibility in resourcing. It provides an economical way to expand capabilities without making long-term hiring commitments.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation is growing increasingly popular among companies across sectors due to the multitude of benefits it offers:

Fast Ramp-Up of Projects

Compared to traditional hiring, staff augmentation accelerates project delivery by providing skilled talent within days or weeks. Pre-screened candidates promptly onboard and integrated to start contributing quickly. This agility is extremely valuable for time-sensitive initiatives.

Access to Specialized and Niche Skill Sets

Through external staffing partners with vast talent networks, clients gain access to leading-edge capabilities that may be highly scarce or absent internally. Augmentation allows you to strategically incorporate niche skill sets on demand.

Enhanced Scalability and Flexibility

Scaling up and down to match workloads is effortless with an elastic augmentation workforce. You can adjust team sizes and skills according to evolving project needs for maximum flexibility. The talent is contracted temporarily with no long-term commitments.

Increased Cost Efficiency

Augmenting with external talent is typically more economical than making full-time specialized hires. You save costs related to salaries, benefits, training, office infrastructure and more. The total outlay is limited to the duration of the engagement.

Focus on Core Priorities

Relying on staffing experts for augmentation needs allows internal teams to focus exclusively on core priorities. Instead of overloaded employees trying to manage overflowing work, specialized external talent addresses the additional workload.

Low Risk and Commitments

Staff augmentation partnerships enable access to supplemental talent without major hiring risks and long-term obligations. You can always adjust or terminate agreements according to organizational priorities. The model offers immense flexibility at minimal risk.

Cultural Diversity and Knowledge Sharing

Augmented team members bring fresh perspectives and knowledge gained from past projects. Their specialized expertise also rubs off positively on the internal team over time. The infusion of external talent stimulates cultural diversity, knowledge sharing and skill development.

The Secrets of Self-Organizing Agile Teams

Agile software development methods like Scrum and XP have become increasingly popular over the last decade. These methods promise faster delivery, improved flexibility, and high-quality software.

But what makes Agile teams so effective? A key trait is that they are “self-organizing” – able to choose their own tasks, dynamically adjust, and deliver quickly. However, research on how teams achieve self-organization has been limited.

To dig deeper, researchers from Victoria University of Wellington conducted an extensive 3-year Grounded Theory study on Agile teams across New Zealand and India. They interviewed and observed 40 Agile practitioners to uncover the practices that enable self-organization. After rigorous data analysis, they identified that Agile teams perform three critical balancing acts:

1. Balancing the freedom they are given by management with the responsibility they assume for results

2. Balancing cross-functionality with necessary specialization across roles and technologies

3. Balancing continuous learning and improvement with pressures to deliver each iteration

By dynamically balancing these tensions, teams are able to uphold key conditions of self-organization like autonomy, cross-fertilization, and self-transcendence.

The analysis reveals that self-organizing capabilities arise from well-tuned practices, not a lack of control. While management grants teams independence, the teams themselves consciously choose to balance responsibilities, perspectives, and focus.So what does this mean for organizations seeking to reap Agile benefits? It highlights that structural changes enable self-organization but real outcomes depend on deliberate choices made by teams on an ongoing basis. The product is only as good as the process!

Final Thought

Offering insights like these, the study reinforces using Grounded Theory to explore underexplored facets of Software Engineering – especially the human elements. This can expand the toolkit of Agile coaches guiding organizations on their journey.There is always more ground to cover when it comes to understanding high-performance teams. But thoughtful research like this moves us several steps forward.