What is Staff Augmentation? A Model to Extend Your Team

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Staff augmentation is quickly becoming a buzzword on the IT job market, attracting more global businesses to hire remotely. Throughout 20+ years of commercial experience, Xcoder has already helped 300+ clients augment their local teams via hiring dedicated developers in India. Keep reading to find out what staff augmentation means, what are its benefits, and how to get the most out of augmenting your team with Indian software developers.

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• What Is Staff Augmentation?
• When Staff Augmentation Is for You
• Staff Augmentation vs Other Models
• Benefits of Staff Augmentation
• How to Succeed with Team Augmentation
• Why Augment Your Team with Xcoder

What Is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy of hiring skilled tech resources on external basis to cover necessary positions in your team temporarily or permanently.

You are the one to choose from the candidates that fit your requirements and to cut or extend your augmented team whenever you need to. Plenty of companies offer staff augmentation. IT staff augmentation vendors help you add skilled technical resources to your in-house development team on either a short or long-term basis. These resources are employed directly by the vendor, thus the cost and liability of making new full-time hires are eliminated. That being said, remote developers hired through a staff augmentation company are dedicated to one project at a time.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation Model

Staff Augmentation Is Right for You if:

1. You already have engineers working on your product in the local office, but you want to extend your team to have a team of programmers develop another part of the product. You need to hire a team of 3-8 tech professionals, but it’s impossible due to the shortage on your local talent market. You realize that local recruitment will take too long and together with the risks and strong demand on the market this option is not viable.
2. You are developing a tech product together with a team of programmers and you need to add new engineers to your team. As the stack of professionals that you intend to hire is rare in your country, you’re looking to extend your search to other locations.
3. You cooperate with a project outsourcing company to develop your product, but this model doesn’t fit you for several reasons. First, you want to communicate with your team directly on a daily basis and second, you wish to be well-acquainted with your remote programmers to make sure they feel like part of your local team. Both of these are crucial for remote team integration with the local team and the motivation to follow a common goal with you and the in-house team.

Staff Augmentation vs Other Models

Staff Augmentation

With the staff augmentation model, you have the opportunity to personally choose the candidates and manage them with the methods you prefer. Basically, the vendor takes over all organizational and administrative hassles, while you get the opportunity to deal with your core responsibilities and collaborate with your augmented team the same way you do with your in-house developers.

Managed Services

The project outsourcing company takes care of all aspects throughout the development of your project – from structuring a team with their developers available to managing all processes on their own side. You don’t need to have any in-house tech expertise or have to spend time on your remote development team. With project outsourcing, customers oftentimes don’t know who’s working on their project, what developers are currently doing, and which decisions are made throughout the process.

Own R&D; Center

If you’re looking to add at least 40 professionals to your team, you can establish your own R&D; center in a country with a more favorable business environment and wider tech talent pool. Opening your own R&D; center means you’ll have to delve into the legal system of the country, learn its cultural specifics, and run all of the risks on your own.

Staff Augmentation in Comparison to Other Models

What Are the Benefits of Staff Augmentation?

High Productivity Level

Staff augmentation enables a higher level of productivity because the developers are focused on a single project 100% of their work time, in contrast to a project outsourcing team which can manage several projects simultaneously. Working for one client and following their big vision also means higher levels of motivation and dedication.

IP Rights Security

From the very beginning of cooperation with your dedicated developers, all IP rights belong to you.

Flexibility

You become more flexible on 2 sides mainly:

1. You gain access to a wide talent pool of IT professionals starting with UI/UX designers and front-end developers to Scrum masters and product owners.
2. It’s much easier to replace a developer – the talent pool is bigger and if you cooperate with a staff augmentation partner like Xcoder, you don’t have to spend additional money for the change over.

 

Cost Efficiency

Staff augmentation has an extremely transparent cost structure. You don’t have to worry about any administrative and organizational expenses such as office space, workstations, and other facilities. You only pay a fee, and the vendor takes care of arranging everything, while you have the opportunity to focus on your main business activities.

Your Offer Stands Out

Software engineers are eager to influence the development process and have a voice in the decisions made throughout their work at a company. That’s why many Indian developers want to cooperate with product companies, which is possible in 2 different ways – direct cooperation with a product company and working via the staff augmentation model.

How to Succeed with Team Augmentation?

1. Choose a vendor that will provide your remote developers with their separate team rooms that have all necessary facilities. For example, at Xcoder, our teams have rooms with the client’s company branding to facilitate offshore team’s integration with the in-house developers.
2. Make sure remote developers feel the effect of being with your local team. At the request of some of our clients, we install so-called “windows to the client” – there’s a camera in the team’s room and a screen that shows what’s going on in the local office.
3. Ask the vendor whether they have professionals who will help you collaborate with your team more efficiently. At Xcoder, we have HR/Client Managers that work alongside your developers and help eradicate all potential misunderstandings throughout your cooperation.

 

Xcoder Staff Augmentation Services

Xcoder provides flexible team augmentation services – whether you need to hire 1 or 20 developers or want to augment your team with other tech professionals like QA engineers or technical writers, 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 your developers, 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.

Apart from extending your local team, Xcoder offers several other value-added services that ensure the smooth integration of your remote development team and help you grow your business. These services include: Launch Workshop, Security Testing, Process Consulting, Technical Consulting, IT Relocation, Quality Control.

Xcoder Staff Augmentation Process

Xcoder process

Tell us Your Needs 

You simply tell us what you are looking for, your expectations, and requirements – you can start by hiring 1 developer or build entire cross-functional team, it’s up to you.

Interview and Hire Developers

Based on your requirements, our recruiters find candidates, interview them, and provide the most relevant candidates for you to review. You can interview candidates as many times as you need with the tools and methods that you prefer.

Start Working

We supply your developers with fully-fledged workstations in one of our offices in India – Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Lviv. Our experts provide an all-round onboarding process and handle all administrative hassles.

Ongoing Support 

We assign an HR/Client manager who will work alongside your developers and help you build a productive relationship with your augmented team. We also make sure your data and employees are secure with the help of control access systems. To help promote a friendly environment, we organize regular team building activities.

Why Augment Your Team with Xcoder?

• Xcoder has access to 185k+ top developers in India.
• We provide you with constant support to help you manage your augmented team efficiently.
• You only pay for the professionals you hire, no matter how many candidates you’ve interviewed.
• Flexible recruitment – you are free to expand or reduce your remote team whenever you want.
• Since 1999, Xcoder has been helping businesses build their teams in India. Throughout this time, Xcoder has received multiple certifications, including a Microsoft Gold Partner Certification.

To find more about Xcoder staff augmentation services, contact us via the form below and our experts will get back to you shortly.