What is Staff Augmentation: How to extend your team in 2024

The ever-evolving IT industry always thrives on innovation, progress, and being the first to show the world the benefits of technology. At the same time, regarding employees, companies want to work with the best to achieve their goals. In this blog, we’ll talk about what is Staff Augmentation, since companies often have several concerns about augmenting their team with an outsourced company. 

Table of contents

• What is Staff Augmentation? 
• What are the benefits of augmenting your team?
• When do you need IT Staff Augmentation?
• What is the process of augmenting your team? 
• What is Staff Augmentation in LATAM? 
• What is Staff Augmentation with ClickIT?
• What is Staff Augmentation FAQs

Enterprises may think about location as a problem when hiring new collaborators. Still, it’s important to mention that the best talent is not always in the same city, state, or even country where a company resides. Bringing that talent in-house can be more expensive than it seems. That’s why we see an increasing trend in the IT industry for this hiring model.

So, let’s begin by explaining what Staff Augmentation is. 

What is Staff Augmentation? 

Staff Augmentation services is an IT strategy that focuses on hiring the best tech team remotely to help your on-site team for a determined period and to perform specific tasks that the team isn’t able to cover.

To easily understand what is Staff Augmentation, we can define it as the process of adding skilled engineers to your in-house team on either a short or long-term basis. Engineers are employed directly by the Staff Augmentation Company. Thus, the cost and liability of making new full-time hires are eliminated. That being said, remote engineers hired through this model are dedicated to one project at a time.

What are the benefits of augmenting your team?

A company’s main need is finding and adding the required talent for your company in an easier and faster way. I would say that there’s always an IT Engineer ready and willing to join your team to help you with the exact required skills that your project needs. 

Here are some of the benefits of augmenting your staff.

1. Adaptability to business conditions

Unlike other kinds of outsourcing models, where you leverage most of your tasks or entire projects to an offshore team, staff augmentation offers you the opportunity to complement your on-site team with a couple of IT engineers with the flexibility to adapt to your internal team rules, processes,  workflow, and needs. This way, you control your team’s workflow, project deadlines, budget, and values. Understanding staff augmentation and enjoying its full potential will ensure your project is always delivered on time and in form.

2. Most competent candidates

When your company is open to finding the best talent and works with the staff augmentation model, you’ll have a bigger spectrum of talent to choose from. You can find engineers with the same abilities or even better ones to complement your team. You’ll be free to work with the right engineer with the experience and profile to complete your project.  Another advantage this offers is that the candidates are already vetted and interviewed thanks to the staff augmentation model, making the hiring process easier and more successful.

3. Competitive rates, no overhead costs.

A company that wants to acquire new talent by augmenting their staff can usually forget about the hassles and extra costs of expanding offices, changing locations, or worrying about adding extra space or equipment when growing their team. This is because your augmented IT staff will commonly work with you 100% online. An IT staff augmentation company is the one that takes care of the whole recruiting, testing, and hiring process, and, depending on the situation or project, they are also in charge of providing the equipment and facilities that the engineers need.

Through staff augmentation, you also ensure that you’re hiring your team from a big talent pool with competitive rates. So you can have more options when augmenting your staff and protecting your budget at the same time.

4. Security

The last benefit, and one of the most important ones when you work with external team members, is the security of your project, ensuring that it will be well managed and delivered on time. This is also fully fledged with the developers; they have the mentality, preparation, and abilities to work remotely and seamlessly with the in-house team to achieve the goals.

Augmenting your software development staff means staying on top of the most important security practices and industry regulations. With the right staff augmentation partner, this process is safe right from the moment you start interviewing candidates to the completion of the project.

When do you need IT Staff Augmentation?

Staff Augmentation can be done in any phase of the project, from the planning step all the way to the execution and even after the delivery when you need engineers to keep your software running.

The engineer can help your team in any situation when you scout for new talent to complement your team, add new functionality, or replace a team member. It’s a seamless and fast process.

What is the process of augmenting your team?

Understanding staff augmentation and its process can be fast and simple. Here are some important stages of the staff augmentation model:

1. Having a clear understanding of the requirements set for a position you want to add to your current team.
   
2. Start looking at candidates with those skills and go through the screening process with the candidates.
   
3. Sort out the best candidate for you, considering their tech expertise, soft skills, values, and other qualities that you consider crucial for your team members.
   
4. Proceed with an onboarding process with the chosen candidate with the help of the staff augmentation company.

What is Staff Augmentation in LATAM?

Staff augmentation services in LATAM have become a trend in the software development world, thanks to the great benefits you get from it. Countries in LATAM have prioritized development and education in technology so you can find top-tier talent in LATAM engineers. Companies from United States and Canada are known for choosing nearshoring to LATAM because they can find quality, talent, and cultural alignment in the same timezone. Also, prices can be more flexible to the company’s budget than the prices you might find with other outsourcing models.

What is Staff Augmentation with ClickIT?

ClickIT provides flexible team augmentation services – whether you need to hire 1 or 20 SysAdmins or want to augment your team with other tech professionals like front-end Devs or DevOps, we can help you.

Your engineers will work full-time on your product development and have no simultaneous projects distracting them. You’ll be the one to manage our engineers, so they’ll feel like part of your core team. In case an issue arises that you or your augmented team need to discuss, an HR/Client manager will help you facilitate the process. 

Suppose you or your company ever had difficulty finding the right Developer or DevOps engineer with the right profile or quality in your city or nearby places to augment your team’s productivity and complete deadlines. In that case, the best option is finding online the top-tier talent that your company needs in the same time zone while working remotely.

Conclusion

Staff augmentation is a hiring strategy that has grown in popularity thanks to its benefits. By augmenting your staff, you can find top-tier talent that has already been tested, interviewed, and trained to work on a specific project for a determined period. You might realize it’s time to acquire new talent when your on-site team doesn’t have the skills or the time to perform a certain important task for the product you’re developing. Here’s where you can find a professional staff augmentation company to find the right members for those activities.

It’s a win-win situation for your tech team and your administrative goals, as your project gets completed and your team is aligned in values, deadlines, and budget.

What is Staff Augmentation FAQs