In times of the global pandemic, more and more companies choose to work online because of quarantine restrictions. Remote work environment makes businesses constantly search for talents augmentation of their teams to close the staff gap and will be able to complete the project on time and within budget. CompTIA’s 2021 Workforce and Learning Trends report states that 40% of businesses hired an additional IT workforce in 2020, and 66% were planning IT team augmentation in 2021.
That’s why it doesn’t seem very surprising that hiring specialists with required experience and qualifications, and at reasonable costs, is becoming a real challenge. According to a Gartner survey, business executives claim that a talent gap is the biggest barrier to the implementation of 64% of new technologies in 2021, compared to only 4% in 2020.
In such reality, flexible staffing solutions, such as team augmentation, become a new trend. If you are wondering what IT team augmentation is and how it can help you address your project needs, JatApp has prepared this article for you, based on our six-year experience of providing dedicated IT professionals.
What is IT team augmentation?
Team augmentation, also known as staff augmentation, is the practice of expanding in-house teams by outsourcing the IT workforce, usually a few professionals at once. With this engagement model, you can personally select the candidates according to your business needs. Your staff augmentation service provider handles all administrative hassles, while you are able to cooperate with your extended team the way you do with your in-house engineers.
Statista reports that the demand for IT team augmentation is increasing and went up from 4.3% in 2017 to 6.3% in 2020. Even though it doesn’t seem like rapid growth, these findings clearly show that more and more businesses globally use team augmentation to meet their staffing needs. These companies opt for an IT staff augmentation project when their in-house employees lack a certain technical expertise, or when they require additional talent to develop software.
IT team augmentation sold by professional services organizations globally
What problems does team augmentation solve?
Talent gap
A CBI/TCS report shows that the United Kingdom alone loses $87 billion annually, as businesses can’t hire professionals with relevant tech skills. In the United States, the situation isn’t getting any better as well. CNBC reports that 1 million IT roles remain unfilled.
As it’s often difficult to find the right expert, especially a niche one, team augmentation is becoming more and more popular, assisting companies in increasing their competitive advantage. The augmentation model allows you to tap into a global talent market and select the best candidates from around the globe.
High costs
Extending your development team is a more cost-effective strategy than recruiting full-time employees. What’s more, with IT staff augmentation services you won’t have to deal with employees’ salaries, insurance, retirement benefits, and office supply maintenance — your service provider takes care of all these things for you.
Expanding your team with software engineers from developing countries will also help you to reduce costs without compromising software quality. Labor rates in Eastern Europe, for example, aren’t that high compared to North America and Western Europe due to the lower costs of living in these countries. As a result, outsourcing to Ukraine will cost you half less than working with developers from the United States or Germany. Below you can find a table with engineers’ average hourly rates in different countries for you to spot the difference.
The lack of control
One of the biggest risks in outsourcing is the loss of control. The lack of supervision may result in a situation when your final product is poorly developed or your vendor does not achieve the expected results. Team augmentation enables you to have a high level of control over your extended team. You choose means of communication with your remote employees and remain involved in all aspects of your project, controlling quality, budget, and project delivery deadlines.
The inability to scale up quickly
As your project goes on, the issue of scaling always seems to be rising. Since the IT team augmentation process won’t take much time, you can quickly scale the size of your workforce to better handle your workload or respond to new market demands. Reliable IT staff augmentation agencies make it easy to find qualified IT workers that would support your current team.
We base this point along with other ones mentioned on global practices and our personal example. Our staff augmentation model has already helped many businesses. Cunio is only one example of such cases. The client reached out to JatApp to hire experienced and qualified backend developers and a project manager to build a notification microservice. Adding new tech skills to the in-house team helped the customer to meet new market demands and therefore scale up business more quickly while having full control over the development process.
Team augmentation vs. other engagement models
Dedicated teams
A dedicated team refers to an engagement model, based on which a service provider delivers you a development team fully committed to your project and company. Dedicated team members are selected and hired based on your unique requirements, ready to complete the entire project and cooperate with you long-term. In contrast, team augmentation means you just hire additional engineers to join your existing in-house team.
Another difference between these 2 models lies in management. Dedicated teams are typically controlled either by a service provider or by your project manager, whereas the augmented staff recognizes only your project manager as their main supervisor.
Managed services
Managed services presuppose that you delegate a range of IT services, like cloud service, systems administration, or service maintenance, to the outsourcing company. Managed services allow you to transfer the burden of certain IT tasks to the vendor. The client benefits from the ability to focus on core business objectives rather than IT maintenance concerns.
In the case of IT managed services vs. staff augmentation, your decision should be based on the level of involvement you want to have in your project. Unlike the managed services model, IT team augmentation means that you can control development processes and manage the team with the method you prefer. Moreover, staff augmentation allows you to increase or decrease the size of your workforce depending on your current needs, whereas managed services do not provide such a level of flexibility.
Project-based model
Project outsourcing means that you delegate control over product development to your service provider, from concept to launch. This outsourcing service model requires you neither to spend time on controlling your team, nor participate in the hiring process.
Compared to team augmentation, you get away from all management issues, once and for all. Project outsourcing suggests low levels of client involvement and occasional communication with the service provider throughout the process. Still, when delegating your project to a third-party, you have to make sure you choose a reliable vendor that is ready to sign such documents as the non-disclosure and property rights agreement. This will help you make sure that none of the information related to your project will be violated.
Take a look at the table below to better compare all engagement models.
When is team augmentation a smarter choice?
If you’re looking for hiring tech talents at a reasonable cost, while remaining fully in charge of your project development and scaling fast, team augmentation can be a good idea. Your choice also depends on your project requirements. IT team augmentation model suits best when:
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A project requires specific skills
Some niche or complex projects may require companies to have certain expertise or skills in a particular area. In this case, companies have to supplement their existing staff with professionals who have the knowledge needed for a specific project. One of the benefits of IT staff augmentation is quick access to the skill set your in-house team lacks.
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A project is short-term
The hiring process can take several months from job posting to onboarding. If you’re short on time, team augmentation is a great solution to meet your staffing needs. You can quickly access a wide pool of engineers with strong hard and soft skills from any part of the world.
However, it’s not uncommon when clients, who decide to extend their teams for short-term projects, face the need to improve their product over time. Recruitment and training of newly employed workers is costly, so customers usually want to recruit developers, with whom they’ve already worked. Such a situation usually happens once a year. When it’s your case, JatApp offers an option of hiring developers full-time after a year of cooperation under the team augmentation model.
Wrap up
Now that you know when to choose staff augmentation and believe that this model is just what you’re looking for, you need to find a reliable IT staff augmentation agency that will deliver you maximum benefits.
Whether you need a single employee or an entire team, JatApp can provide you with highly qualified software developers and other IT workers, for example, UI/UX designers, QA engineers, and project managers. Our agency will provide you with the best talents from the Eastern European talent market, so you’ll be able to select the most skillful candidates that align with your business goals.
JatApp also ensures that you will have complete control over your project and manage your external employee’s work just like your in-house one. What’s more, our IT team augmentation model allows you to save up to 60% of your costs compared to Western markets.
If you need our help with team augmentation, don’t hesitate to contact us. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
