IT Staff Augmentation Roadmap: What Does Team Expansion Mean?

The IT industry took a slow start in development but is rapidly scaling. The market is projected to reach $328.3 billion by 2032, with a CAGR of 7.8% from 2023 to 2032.

The developer market is also doing quite well. Statista analysts say the number of IT professionals worldwide will increase to 28.7 million by 2024. Therefore, there are many reasons to believe that software development staff augmentation will continue to get easier.

This article was written for those seeking to expand their team efficiently without exceeding their budget.

As the Head of Partnerships, I’ll share some insights to help you assess whether this collaboration model suits your project.?

What Does Team Expansion Mean, and How Does This Model Differ from Outsourcing?

Classic outsourcing involves partially or fully delegating project tasks to external development service providers. This means that your team will work in tandem with an external team, or a contractor will independently perform the work.

Staff augmentation definition: Hiring specialists from an external company for remote (or local) collaboration with your team. These experts temporarily join the project and report to an in-house manager, almost like full-time company employees.

The difference between outsourcing and team augmentation is significant in terms of workflow organization and financial matters.?

Let's identify when it is best to choose the team expansion model and the advantages it brings to the project.

When Is a Staff Augmentation Project Needed?

According to Statista analysts, the global IT services market is expected to reach $1.334 trillion by 2028. This means that the demand for outsourcing and staff augmentation professionals will continue to grow.

However, a legitimate question arises: When to choose an external service provider and when to expand the team with temporary specialists?

I have composed five key factors indicating that your project needs staff augmentation rather than any other collaboration model with external performers.

When You Have a Team, but It’s Not Enough

Every company using digital products for work, whether implementing them, supporting them, or both, must have an internal team. It can consist of one or two engineers or a full-fledged team of developers and testers.

Typically, these resources are sufficient, but sometimes they may not be enough, such as when implementing an external project, re-profiling a digital solution, or developing a new product.

In such a case, you can either hire a contractor and delegate tasks to them or expand the team by hiring temporary workers remotely or directly to the main office.

When Specialized Skills Are Needed

A well-established and experienced team is good, especially when working on one type of project for a long time. However, sometimes there are needs, such as adding modules based on technologies that are unfamiliar to the team. Problems may arise that in-house experts cannot handle, or the solution may require compromises.?

In this case, software development staff augmentation is the best solution. This collaboration model will meet the need for specialized experts and help your team expand its expertise and improve skills.?

Considering the cost of expansion services, this is a justified investment in the digital product's future and the company's IT staff.

When the Budget Does Not Allow Hiring Additional Staff

If you need to expand your team, one option is to hire specialists for your company. However, it requires additional expenses from you, such as:

• Renting office space.
• Purchasing equipment and licenses.
• Paying for HR services that will recruit and onboard experts.
• Salaries and periodic bonuses.
• Taxes, insurance, medical examinations, etc.

In financial terms, these items translate into thousands of dollars in additional monthly expenses.?

Is your company's budget prepared for them? If not, a better option is nearshore staff augmentation.

When Development Timelines Are Constrained

Launching a project, you can't be sure its development will go perfectly. Difficulties or problems may arise, consuming your team's time. Ultimately, this can negatively impact deadlines, leading to a delay in the release.

To mitigate such scenarios, you need to take rapid countermeasures, such as expanding the team and parallelizing processes.?

While this task may not be instantaneous, you'll have additional team members in a matter of days.

The new resources can be directed toward resolving current issues and continuing development while in-house experts address bugs.

When Rapid Scaling Is Needed

One of the critical advantages of development team augmentation is the ability to add experts for a limited period. While traditional hiring and onboarding can take months, the augmentation model offers expansion within one or a few weeks at most.

This is crucial when:

• Your project faces issues hindering development.
• The existing team doesn't cover the entire workload.
• Specialists lack experience or skills with certain technologies.
• There's a need for quickly adding new modules/features.
• Time is insufficient to meet project deadlines.

In such cases, the contracting company can allocate specialists to you for a limited time, ranging from a few hours to several weeks, depending on your needs and urgency.?

This is just one of the many benefits of the collaboration model.

Staff augmentation is a flexible and efficient solution for project needs, whether to address resource gaps, require specialized skills, manage budget constraints, deal with tight timelines, or respond to the need for rapid scaling.

In my upcoming articles, I will share:

• Some unexpected benefits and challenges of staff augmentation;
• Five factors to determine the expertise of an outsourced team;
• A step-by-step example of team augmentation arrangement based on AdvantISS cooperation models.

Stay tuned! ??