Skill scarcity is a pressing issue, I have a solution

Resource and staff augmentation is broadly used with the term project outsourcing, which is incorrect. It is a lone term which means the process of hiring external resources and integrating them with an in-house team whenever the need arises.

The augmentation model helps in tackling skill debt by enabling the organization to hire employees based on the specific skills required. 

This model offers flexibility so that the organization can hire the right resources based on their needs and wants, they can hire experts from different industries who have different skills and expertise based on the business needs. Based on the needs they can even fill some skill gaps by hiring IT experts with the right skills. 

By using IT staff augmentation companies can also replace or hire experts for a specific task based on the specific requirements.

Let’s understand the process of IT staff augmentation to understand how it works.

What is the process of IT Staff Augmentation?

The IT staff augmentation process is made up of a sequence of steps. Let’s understand what are the steps to consider while assembling a staff-augmented team.

Any organization needs to go through four steps while implementing IT Staff augmentation.

Let’s understand all of them one by one

1. Defining your requirements: It is necessary to understand and analyze the gaps in your team to understand the accurate requirements to be filled.

Analyzing the skill gaps, absence of specialties, etc to make the decision-making process smoother.

Based on the analysis the team can identify how many members are required to be hired, what skills should they possess, etc.

Staff augmentation can help an organization in solving the below-mentioned problems:

• Filling the technical skill gaps

• Meeting the shortage of software engineers

• Helping to meet the lack of niche-specific expertise

• Increasing the time to release the product in the market

• Mitigating the unforeseen team composition issues.

Not only this, you should also prepare a document stating all the requirements and defining the roles and responsibilities clearly to have a smooth augmentation process.

1. Searching for a tech partner: Various outsourcing companies provide staff augmentation services, the companies can approach these staff augmentation companies to hire remote developers.

After getting the list of top companies that offer staff augmentation services, you need to access the following

• Reviews submitted by a past client

• Any successful case studies

• Analyzing the company workflow

• The years of experience of the company

• Analyze the niche-specific expertise

Finalize a few best companies & reach out to their representative and share your requirements, figure out whether the prospective company is capable enough to fulfill your needs by asking them the below questions.

• How much time would they require to allocate the resources?

• Is there any option to choose the professional on my own?

• What do I need to pay them?

• Are there any hidden fees?

• Can they help onboard the augmented staff?

The last step in this step is to get the NDA signed by both parties for a smoother work transition.

1. Selecting the augmented staff: When you are hiring external remote developers, consider the below steps.

• Reviewing the candidates: Asking the staff augmentation vendor to gather the CVs of the prospective candidates and based on the CVs received you need to finalize the best fit.

• Conducting interviews: The next step in the process is to schedule the interview of the shortlisted candidates to have a smooth interview process.

• Assess tech skills:  Reviewing the technical skills of the candidates to find the right mix of skill sets that meet the requirements of the company.

1. Onboarding the extended team members: This is the last step of the staff augmentation process.

After checking all the boxes the last step in the process is integrating the remote team with the in-house team by using proper collaboration tools.

If the augmented services provider doesn’t extend support in the onboarding process you should follow the below steps:

• Preparing an onboarding plan: At this step, the organizations should prepare all the relevant documents that are necessary to provide detailed information about the work to all the hired new developers.

• Holding the introduction meeting: Conducting the induction meeting is very necessary, as it will help the external team members to get into the skin of the process and fundamentals followed by the organization.

• Building a collaborative environment: After the induction process is done the next step in the process is to use the right collaboration methods to build the right collaboration between the in-house team and external team.

• Guiding the new employees: Providing thorough information to all the employees to help them understand the workflow easily. This information should comprise all the details which are necessary to perform the job responsibilities.

• Assigning a mentor: This step is not compulsory but preferable. Many organizations hire separate project managers whose job responsibility is to work as mentors and help the team of developers perform their tasks efficiently.

We hope you are easily able to understand the staff augmentation process so far. 

Now, let’s understand the steps to be considered while managing a remote team. 

Most augmented teams choose to work from a remote location. Therefore, there are instances of mismanagement in a development project. 

Steps to Manage the IT Staff Augmented Team

Let’s understand how you can manage an augmented team that helps you achieve maximum benefits. Let’s understand all the steps one by one:

Providing required tools and information: As an organization, it is the responsibility of the company to provide access to all the relevant information about the organization. Not only this, the organization should also provide access to all the tools that are used by the in-house team.

Develop a continuous flow of communication: It is the responsibility of the organization to ensure that all the new employees find it easy to communicate with the in-house team without any hassles.

Using the below communication tools can help the organization build a smooth communication flow

• Slack

• Asana

• Google Meets

• Dropbox

• Trello

The organization should also build a proper communication agenda to set up clear and concise conversations whenever required.

Delegating tasks and monitoring the success: Preparing a detailed document to mention all the roles and responsibilities of the employee. The organization should also mention information related to KPIs and benchmarks to be achieved within the specific period to achieve them.

Below we have mentioned the five best project management tools to streamline the project management process.

• Notion

• Asana

• Basecamp

• Trello

• Jira

Checking the quality of work and providing feedback: Analyze the quality of the work of every employee and provide constructive feedback for improvisation. 

To define the quality assessments we would suggest you implement the following:

• Quality of standards: Prepare a list of detailed qualitative standards to be achieved to consider a task as complete.

• Definition of Done Criteria (DoD): A proper listicle that helps in considering a task as completed.

Setting proper goals and KPIs: The extended team members need to understand the number of responsibilities and duties they need to perform during the software development project.

To set the targets and KPIs of the external team it is necessary to analyze to work deliverables achieved by the in-house team by doing this the organization would be able to set a benchmark that indicates the tentative targets required to be achieved by every employee.

After understanding the steps required to be followed for the smooth management of an Augmented team let’s understand when can you choose to leverage the staff augmentation model.

When should you leverage IT Staff Augmentation?

Staff Augmentation is not like a one-size-fits-all, because every business has different needs and wants.

Let’s understand when an organization should opt for IT Staff Augmentation

1. Stress-free hiring: Team augmentation allows an organization to hire employees based on the requirements by helping the organization get rid of the time-consuming hiring process.

2. Hard to find skilled employees: By doing staff augmentation it becomes easy for the organization to hire skilled developers which is different from finding otherwise.

3. Filling temporary positions: The best benefit that staff augmentation provides to the organization is the benefit of hiring technical candidates for a short time.

4. Addressing the increased workload: When the organization wants to tackle the increased workload they can hire skilled employees and fill the employee scarcity gap by hiring them through IT staff augmentation.

5. Having complete control: By using the Staff augmentation method, the organization gets the complete right to control the external team.

6. Hiring the top tech talents: As Staff augmentation allows to choose from a huge talent pool it becomes easy for the organization to hire the best talent for the development project.

7. Finding a cost-effective team extension solution: Want to save the excessive money spent on hiring? Then, use the Staff augmentation method to hire the best talent at a minimized cost.

8. Achieving task completion commitment: By hiring augmented employees, the company gets the assurance that all the hired employees are meeting the work commitment successfully.

After learning everything about IT Staff Augmentation, let’s find out how I can help you do IT Staff Augmentation

How can I help you bridge the skill scarcity Gap.

I own a Custom Software Development company Acquaint Softtech. We provide IT Staff Augmentation Services and custom software development services. 

We hold ten years of industry experience; our agile team is responsive and dedicated to helping our clients achieve their vision by assisting them in achieving successful project deliverables.

If you are falling short of skilled IT professionals then reach out to me and hire remote developers who fit your budget and project criteria.

Ending Notes

During times of crop scarcity do you forcefully rely on harvesting crops by paying high for the seeds? No, right? Instead, you would outsource the seeds, similarly during times of skill scarcity would you rather invest in hiring a proper full-time in-house employee or would you hire a developer from a relevant external source? That’s when IT Staff Augmentation comes into the picture.

By using IT Staff augmentation you can easily fill the skill gaps present in your organization to meet the successful project deliverable cost-effectively.