In 2024, companies are prioritizing strong and trustworthy teams. More than ever, organizations focus on building an IT staff that aligns with their values and goals—a team with the right tech stack and abilities to complete the project while fitting administrative priorities. Hence, the must-have conversation of the year is Staff Augmentation vs Consulting solutions.
Staff augmentation means adding the necessary skills and talent to your team for a specific, time-limited project. Integrating professionals is a great way to complement your staff so you can meet your goals cost-efficiently and easily without worrying about hiring hassles.
On the other hand, consulting solutions are an effective way to keep up with the changing tech trends and get personalized assistance on your specific project so you, as a CTO, CEO, or VP of engineering, can select the next steps, whether that ends up being staff augmentation, maybe building your team, or hiring a nearshore partner.
Ready to make your choice? Let’s dive deeper into each strategy!
Table of contents
- What is Staff Augmentation?
- What are IT Consulting Solutions?
- Staff Augmentation vs Consulting: What is the Difference?
- How Can You Choose Between Staff Augmentation vs Consulting?
- Staff Augmentation vs Consulting: Case Studies
- Staff Augmentation vs Consulting Wrap-Up
- FAQs
What is Staff Augmentation?
Staff Augmentation is a popular strategy for tech businesses in which companies temporarily hire one or more professionals to complete specific tasks. These new members are intended to support your in-house team in activities they aren’t able to complete in the software development process.
These staffing solutions provide easy access to the resources companies need without the complicated process and costs of recruiting new employees for time-limited projects. Also, it increases the success of your delivered product as the staff is qualified to complete their tasks in time and follow the company’s values and guidelines.
Click here to read a full guide on what staff augmentation is.
What are the advantages of staff augmentation?
Choosing the staff augmentation model has a long list of benefits for organizations. The main benefit is how quickly they can integrate members into their team to complete specific tasks for exactly the right amount of time they need.
Staff augmentation vs consulting is a very interesting conversation because both options offer great advantages for software product development. So, reviewing them and seeing which fits your requirements better is important.
Let’s start with the advantages of Staff Augmentation:
- Quick hiring process: Staffing solutions involve a faster hiring process when you partner with a specialized agency because they work with pre-vetted and qualified engineers who have already passed all hiring filters by the moment they integrate into your team.
- Budget-friendly: Staff augmentation services are a great option when you have a specific budget for staffing your project because most of the process is handled by professionals who will find a partner that fits your requirements. This includes finding the right level of seniority and compensation that fits the position.
- Cultural alignment: With a defined process for staff augmentation, you can ensure that you hire a team that aligns with your company’s values and goals. Your augmented staff should match your working hours, methodologies, tools, and communication processes.
- Reduced onboarding efforts: There are little to no onboarding efforts as all the testing and evaluation are made before your new team members join the project. Usually, all the onboarding efforts are carried out by the staff augmentation company you’re working with, and it’s just a matter of introducing them to your team and specific internal processes.
- Workflow flexibility: You don’t need to change your existing workflow; your new team member will be ready to get on board with the needed tasks and match your team’s pace. A good staffing solutions partner will find the perfect engineer for your project.
What are the challenges of staff augmentation?
Between staff augmentation vs consulting, the second has been a growing trend in recent years because of the benefits previously discussed. As with any strategy in an organization, it comes with its challenges. Here are some aspects to consider to ensure you succeed in augmenting your staff.
- Different skill sets: Working with engineers outside your team means they might be skilled in different technologies or work with diverse methodologies. That’s why it’s important to have a planned hiring process. This can be eased through collaborating with professional staff augmentation services.
- Integration efforts: Depending on the project or your specific needs, your team might need time to introduce the new member to your internal processes and culture. The advantage is that your augmented staff should be qualified to make this process fast and easy.
- Security and reliability: Data security and company resource access are common concerns regarding hiring external staff. Is it safe to share them with people outside your team? With a trained professional and the right security measures, absolutely! This is one of the most crucial reasons to work with a staff augmentation company that prioritizes security regulations and has formal hiring agreements protecting all parts.
What are IT Consulting Solutions?
Consulting solutions provide advice and guidance for organizations needing to keep updated on the latest technologies or working on a software project.
In the conversation between staff augmentation vs consulting, organizations reach out to experts in consulting solutions to address specific problems, make strategic decisions, or develop a project.
Professionals in this area keep up with IT trends and new technologies in the market and are prepared to analyze their clients in-depth to provide the specific guidance they need.
What are the advantages of IT Consulting Solutions?
Many organizations find consulting solutions helpful when it’s well-managed and aligns with the company’s culture, budget, and purpose. Consultants work hand-in-hand with the organization to help them grow and achieve their project goals; here are some of the advantages that this model brings:
- High expertise and focus: Consulting professionals have a higher grade of specialization in IT and can offer comprehensive details on the specific actions that could benefit their clients.
- Objectiveness: As the tech environment is highly competitive, having an external perspective can help organizations address issues that might not be as easy to identify from the inside. IT consultants have a complete market overview, trends, and client demands.
- Strategic assistance: One thing that staff augmentation vs consulting have in common is that they ensure compatibility between the business goals and their IT strategy. Their guidance or assistance is personalized and fitted to the organization’s needs and resources.
- Resource efficiency: The staff augmentation vs consulting debate can agree that both strategies are great for time-defined projects. This is because you can avoid hiring hassles and overhead costs from finding full-time employees. Also, there is a wide variety of consulting partners, so you can hire the one that aligns more closely with your budget, deadlines, and requirements.
What are the challenges of IT Consulting?
- Cost concerns: Budget is an important aspect to consider when working with external partners, but the hourly rates of consulting solutions are flexible and can adapt to your project.
- Dependency: When the process isn’t well-managed, it can lead to dependency, so when the consultants aren’t available, or the consultancy is over, the team might have difficulty adjusting. Defining the right strategy is key to avoiding this.
- Resistance to change: It’s common for teams to find it difficult to receive an external assessment and guidance. Building trust and strong collaboration from the beginning is important so the in-house team is more open to implementing the consultant’s strategies and recommendations.
Staff Augmentation vs Consulting: What is the Difference?
Being two different approaches for organizations to fulfill their IT requirements, staff augmentation vs consulting share many distinctions.
To begin with, staff augmentation refers to hiring professionals to work with your in-house staff and directly execute tasks that impact a temporary project. Consultants will work with your team, but they provide their assistance and advice rather than execute the suggested strategy themselves.
Another difference is that staff augmentation agencies or companies usually assign one member or a small crew for each client, while a consulting business might be a bigger team providing consultancy to multiple clients at a time.
The duration of the collaboration also varies depending on the project. Still, staff augmentation is a short to medium-term agreement as they are focused on filling specific skill gaps in a project. Consulting can last from short to long-term partnerships because organizations might need guidance on small projects or complete business transformations.
However, it’s also important to mention that staff augmentation partnerships can lead organizations to hire their augmented staff full-time depending on factors like their performance, expertise, and customer satisfaction.
Finally, integration and control are crucial differences between staff augmentation and consulting. As staffing solutions involve professionals actively participating in tasks, it can feel like they are part of the in-house team. Collaboration is close, and integration becomes easier. In this model, the company has more control over their augmented staff and task management because they work directly on their project.
Consulting solutions can make integration harder because they are not involved as deeply in the performing and developing parts of the process. Here, consultants are more active in project management because they guide strategies.
How Can You Choose Between Staff Augmentation vs Consulting?
Each approach is suited for different scenarios and depends on your company’s unique requirements. Here’s a quick guide that can help you make the decision.
1: Define your goals, requirements, and timelines.
- What are the expectations for the project?
- When should the project start, and when should it be completed?
- Which skills are needed to complete the project?
2: Evaluate your in-house team and your company’s resources.
- What skills does my team currently have?
- Are there any gaps or areas where we need external support?
- How complex is the project?
- What are my available budget and resources?
3: Consider your team’s integration capabilities and stakeholders’ objectives.
- Is my team open to working with external partners?
- Which approach aligns better with the business’ vision and priorities?
- Do we need strategic guidance, or do we need to fill a skill gap?
4: Research and consult with professional agencies.
- What partnership agreements do they offer?
- Do they prioritize security and effective communication?
- Are their services suited to my requirements and budget?
These are just some of the questions you must ask before deciding between staff augmentation vs consulting. The list may vary depending on your case. A deeper analysis will include important steps like project risk assessment and a support and maintenance needs evaluation. Also, a more extensive review of case studies and client references before choosing a partner.
So, it’s important to make an informed decision and contact staff augmentation and consulting professionals who can recommend the ideal approach. In some cases, a combination of both is possible.
When Should I Choose Staff Augmentation?
Overall, staff augmentation is a great choice if you need to fill a skill or expertise gap that’s missing in your current in-house team. Also, when your project’s workload is increasing due to your product growing, staffing solutions can provide the needed expertise with flexibility and professionalism.
When comparing staff augmentation vs consulting, staff augmentation is great when looking for hands-on project execution and close integration with your team. The right staff augmentation partnership will feel like part of your in-house team.
When Should I Choose IT Consulting?
Generally, consulting solutions are ideal when your company seeks guidance, advice, or assistance with specific challenges regarding integrating IT resources into your processes.
Consulting solutions are great when you want to work with generalists or professionals with expertise in various tech domains. This approach is also good for getting an objective perspective on your processes, and it is especially ideal for big organizational transformations.
Staff Augmentation vs Consulting: Case Studies
ClickIT and Stellar Menus
Stellar Menus provides smart QR code menus and AI for restaurants to optimize how they present menus and make improved data-driven decisions. This results in higher profits and happier stakeholders.
For their project, they needed to create a scalable and available infrastructure for their cloud application. Our team at ClickIT provided them with three developers, a QA tester, and a cloud engineer.
The ClickIT team created multiple ECS clusters for each environment, launching each application component in containerized microservices. They also used Terraform and Terraform Cloud to configure the entire infrastructure and migrate from DigitalOcean to AWS.
As a result, the availability and scalability of the application increased, reaching the company’s goals.
Check out the full Stellar Menus Case Study.
ClickIT and Reconstruct
Reconstruct combines reality capture, design, and schedule to offer clients with construction projects full visibility, coordination, and quality.
They needed to improve the scalability and performance of their application and decided to work with a nearshore outsourcing framework. That’s how ClickIT provided them with four engineers to work on its project: two full-stack developers, a Mobile developer (Vue.js), and a DevOps engineer.
ClickIT’s engineers helped Reconstruct to implement Terraform best practices and configure a lot of infrastructure on AWS. Also, they fixed, maintained, and developed the features of the Reconstruct application.
This resulted in a better understanding of the app’s cloud infrastructure and improved organization, workflows, and security.
Check out the full Reconstruct Case Study.
Staff Augmentation vs Consulting Wrap-Up
The always interesting conversation of staff augmentation vs consulting can conclude like this: staff augmentation is great for temporarily integrating new skills into your team for specific tasks in a project, while IT consulting guides the tools and strategies an organization must follow to achieve their specific goals.
Both collaboration models bring many benefits to companies of all types and sizes. To begin with, they provide high expertise in the top technology trends and market demands. They also offer seamless workflows because they align with your company’s values, policies, expectations, and requirements.
When both strategies are well-managed, you’ll see an improvement in all aspects of your company, from positive internal changes like a better workflow and communication to organizational aspects like resource management and ROI.
Between staff augmentation vs consulting, the first one might offer a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of your organization. As well as a closer collaboration to complete your product delivery. But the final decision will depend on your organization’s needs, so make sure you find a partner that specializes in both models so that you can find the right course of action that fully suits you.
FAQs
Staffing solutions provide flexibility in managing workloads and growing a company’s workforce to adapt to specific project demands or fill skill gaps. Staff augmentation is a cost-effective and short-term strategy that, when managed well, will ensure seamless collaboration with your full-time team while providing knowledge and skills to deliver a more successful product.
IT consulting offers unique advantages, like specialized expertise and an objective perspective that gives organizations the right guidance on what resources and strategies they can implement to align their IT needs with their business goals. It allows an informed and comprehensive approach to technology trends and client demands.
Organizations should define the project’s goals, duration, complexity, and requirements. Then, evaluate their in-house team’s expertise, budget, and constraints. That will determine a base to decide between staff augmentation vs consulting. Staff augmentation is a great strategy for temporary working with professionals with specific skills, while IT consulting works fine for companies that are looking for generalists or that just need specific guidance on their projects.
Successfully integrating augmented staff with the existing team requires a strategic approach. Clear communication is essential, so it’s important to have effective channels and dialogue between your augmented and in-house teams. The onboarding process is also crucial, so take the time to introduce your augmented team to your culture, values, and policies. Team-building activities, regular check-ins, and continuous feedback can also contribute to a positive working environment.
To get the maximum value from IT consulting, organizations should start by defining objectives. A collaborative approach is crucial, this means leveraging consultants’ expertise in decision-making processes and encouraging open communication. Establishing measurable performance metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) helps track the success and impact of the consulting engagement over time so that, in the end, this reflects a significant return on investment.
