What is IT staff augmentation? What are the major risks related to it? How to avoid them? If you’d like to receive clear answers to these and many other related questions you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll discuss the three key risks of IT staff augmentation and how to successfully mitigate them. But first, let’s once again remind ourselves what IT staff augmentation is.
What Is IT Staff Augmentation?
Simply put, IT staff augmentation can be defined as the process of providing the needed human resources for a project or company. Usually, this concerns software developers but can also extend to other stakeholders such as a project manager, analyst, designer, etc. A very popular form of staff augmentation at the moment is remote staff augmentation or hiring a dedicated software development team for a project or company.
In this case, you get a dedicated development team which works at the staffing company’s office. The latter serves as the official employer of the team’s members and takes care of office space, taxes, payroll and so forth. This way, you get direct access to remote full-time developers who become a part of your team.
IT staff augmentation and dedicated development teams have become quite popular models of software outsourcing in the recent years. However, many potential clients who are considering software outsourcing may not always clearly understand what these two terms imply and if there are any ponential risks to be aware of. So let’s see which risks there are which you must know about.
Top 3 Risks of Using IT Staff Augmentation Services
While it’s true that staff augmentation offers certain advantages such as development cost savings, less legal responsibilities and others, there also exist the following three risks:
- Team reliability
- Human resources deficit
- Mismanagement
Now, the risks themselves are not something to be afraid of. You just have to know how to successfully mitigate them. That’s exactly what we’re going to do – analyze these risks and explain how to easily avoid them. Let’s start with the first one.
Team Reliability
This is the most important aspect of using IT staff augmentation services – ensuring that the team the development company provides you with is really reliable. When you just start cooperation with your development partner you provide detailed requirements for your project and future team members. The staffing company finds the right candidates and lets you choose whom you want to hire among them.
Otherwise, the company may provide those people who are already working for it. In any case, the best way to mitigate this risk is applying a strict screening and testing process on your side to ensure that the available candidacies really match the requirements and are sufficiently qualified and experienced.
Human Resources Deficit
Sometimes it’s not always possible to find the right human resources for your project or company. The reasons may be different: searching in the wrong country, poor job offer, competition in the marketplace, etc. Or in many cases, it may take quite some time till you find the right candidate.
The remedy for this issue is simple – do your research and conduct search in the regions which are known for providing the best developers for the needed technology or language. Also, give yourself some time for the recruiting process and be patient.
Mismanagement
This outsourcing model implies responsibility and management on your side. You are the one who manages the team. For this reason, poor management of the team may lead to poor results. Therefore, you want to be sure that you or your company have the needed management ability to succesfully lead your dedicated development team. Otherwise, you should consider using managed IT services.
Conclusion
Using IT staff augmentation services and dedicated development teams is definitely a great idea for your company or project. However, you must be aware of the key three potential risks which are mismanagement, deficit of human resources and team reliability.
Today we have anayzed these risks in detail and explained how to succesfully mitigate them. If you use our advice, it will be much easier for you to find a reliable software development partner and safely use its IT staff augmentation services.
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