IT Staff Augmentation: A Guide To Scaling Your Development Team
Adding tech experts to your in-house IT team can be quick, effortless, and cost-effective. Whether you suffer a skill shortage or require more coders to meet the deadline, software staff augmentation can help. A provider can temporarily recruit and onboard rare-skilled and culture-fit developers for your project.
Mobilunity has successfully founded software engineers around the globe for 10+ years, and we’re glad to share our expertise in tech team augmentation. Below, you’ll explore how to scale a company and check a 9-step guide on doing this time and cost-effectively.
Planning and Implementing Software Staff Augmentation
Two main reasons for extending your team are workforce deficiency and lack of knowledge. In both cases, the fastest and most reliable way to find new programmers is to turn to professionals. Staff augmentation outsourcing companies will explore the project scope, help you assess your resources, and identify gaps.
So, your it team extension starts with finding the agency to get the right coders on board. You’ll need to prepare a checklist with criteria for your future partner and search the web. Also, try using your network and ask for recommendations from reliable outstaffing companies. They’ll source, interview, and hire on-demand engineers.
The next step is onboarding and integrating the new members into your workflow. Getting them acquainted with your company values, culture, and communication style is also critical. This is a top-level action plan; however, we’ll share more details in the guide below.
Best Practices in IT Team Augmentation
Once you hire new technicians, you need to integrate them into your working processes and ensure they collaborate effectively with the in-house team. You’ll need to incorporate comfortable and easy-to-use communication tools and minimize cultural differences between the two teams. Encourage knowledge sharing and demonstrate the same attitude to all developers.
Whether you opt for an onshore, offshore, or nearshore software staff augmentation, effective management is the key to your project’s success. You’ll find plenty of tools like Asana and Jira to assign tasks, track their completion, and monitor deadlines. Visibility of tasks, simplicity of document sharing, and ease of collaboration should be your priorities in selecting the team management software.
Documented instructions, procedures, and guidelines will explain your requirements to the extended team so you all are on the same page. Such an approach will guarantee high-quality and consistent deliverables. It will also create a know-what-to-expect working atmosphere, which is beneficial for all team members.
Cost Considerations for Tech Workforce Augmentation
With outstaffing, you can pick the option that fits your technical requirements and budget opportunities. Since you hire remote software engineers, it’s reasonable to consider nearshore and offshore destinations. For instance, hiring extra people from its Eastern part can be a perfect solution if your core team is based in Western Europe.
Cooperation with Indian or Latin American coders can, in this case, cause some issues due to different cultures and time zones. The next section might help you get an idea of how much you’ll need to spend on your staff augmentation project. However, a provider will estimate the monthly budget more precisely, considering your skillset needs and terms.
A Comparative Cost Analysis of Extending a Team Internationally
Let’s estimate the cost of a scaling team in popular IT destinations for outstaffing. You’ll learn the hourly rates of software developers in several countries (Glassdoor data), assuming there are 168 working hours in a month. We’ll consider cultural compatibility from the perspective of a US-based company and see the English Proficiency Index from EF.
| Country | Average Hourly Rate (USD) | Cultural Compatibility | English Proficiency | Time Zone Difference (from GMT +0) |
| USA | 65 | High | – | GMT -7 to GMT -4 |
| UK | 27 | High | – | GMT +0 |
| Germany | 34 | Medium | 10 | GMT +2 |
| Ukraine | 19 | High | 45 | GMT +3 |
| India | 5 | Low | 60 | GMT +5:30 |
| LATAM | 11 | Low | 89 (Mexico) 70 (Brazil) 28 (Argentina) 76 (Colombia) | GMT -8 to GMT -3 |
Regarding cost-saving, hiring coders in India and Latin America is very beneficial for a US company. However, the time difference and some cultural aspects of Indian developers, like overemphasis on seniority, collectivism, stability over innovation, long break routines, etc., will probably make this country less attractive for workforce augmentation.
LATAM countries offer almost zero time difference and nearly six times lower costs. On the other side, the region’s cultural compatibility could be better due to a more relaxed attitude to deadlines, longer breaks, and a less direct communication style. Also, English proficiency is pretty low in LATAM’s tech hubs.
Ukraine appears to be in the middle of all the criteria, offering 30%-50% lower rates than their UK and German colleagues. Along with proficiency in English, Ukrainian IT guys share similar business culture values with their American co-workers. Arriving on time, speaking directly, being flexible, respecting hierarchy, and staying creative are only some of the key features of Ukrainian developers.
How To Scale Your Development Team
Let’s put together all the above to get a full view of the technical team augmentation — here’s the process.
Step 1: Define Your Requirements
Compare the project scope with your in-house team’s competencies. Do your developers have the skills but need to extend the deadline to complete the assignment? Do they lack the expertise to fulfill specific tasks? Outline the goals of your staff augmentation project: reducing workload, increasing productivity, or adding knowledge of specific technologies.
Step 2: Choose the Right Partner
You can google or search relevant platforms like Clutch, G2, TrustRadius, etc., to find companies providing team augmentation services. Check their track records and relevant use cases. Your potential partner has to know how to engage tech experts in your country of interest. Check if you’re comfortable with their communication style and cultural peculiarities.
Step 3: Interview and Select Talent
After you select the outstaffing vendor and define your goals, your software staff augmentation provider initiates sourcing. Recruiters will find, communicate, screen, and interview your future coders. You can run tech interviews or provide tests to ensure the programmer has the required expertise. Joining HR interviews will help you choose the person to fit your working environment.
Step 4: Onboard the Team
Once all the hiring paperwork is done, it’s time to integrate newcomers into your workflows. Arrange training to familiarize coders with your software, systems, principles of work, and expectations. If possible, organize a team building event to let old and new members meet and get used to each other. As a manager, embrace cultural diversity and appreciate openness in your team.
Step 5: Establish Communication Protocols
With a mixed team, you need to make sure programmers mark their progress and track what others do regardless of their location and workload. Weekly meetings will help everyone stay on the same page and help software engineers get involved in related processes. Also, software team augmentation will work only with top collaboration tools like Slack, Asana, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Step 6: Set Clear Expectations
It’s vital to define who does what in your team. So, outline tasks, responsibilities, and deliverables for each programmer. Explain the interrelations between their roles and document this to avoid ambiguity. Introduce performance metrics to assess the effectiveness and progress of each member and the entire development team. Give coders procedures and guidelines so they perform tasks according to your requirements.
Step 7: Monitor and Manage the Team
IT staff augmentation will only work with regular check-ins and management feedback. Developers must know about the project’s progress and stay updated about its goals. This will help you notice potential or appearing issues and avoid or mitigate deviations from the initial plan. Once you face challenges, stay flexible and be ready to change milestones, workflows, and even your team composition.
Step 8: Foster a Collaborative Environment
Sharing ideas and knowledge between team members is essential for driving innovations to your project. So, ensure your tech talents have tools for informal but business-related communication. Treat all the members equally so remote and on-site developers feel valued and appreciated. Their cultural backgrounds should matter in your staff augmentation project.
Step 9: Review and Scale
KPIs can’t go without their assessment, so arrange regular performance evaluations in your hybrid team. The results of this review will indicate if augmentation is successful and point to the current needs of your project. This stage will help you realize whether you need to scale the team up or down. Luckily, you can do this promptly and without stress with an IT staff augmentation company.
Software Development Team Augmentation in Mobilunity
Here’s how Mobilunity — one of the top outstaffing providers in Europe — approaches technical team augmentation.
- We analyze your needs. Our managers explore your project requirements. Then, they recommend the team composition to complete it on time. We analyze the gaps and agree which experts to hire.
- We craft requirements for your applicants. We define tech skills and evaluate which soft ones are ideal for the position. After this, we promote the vacancies through job boards, social media, and our professional network.
- We select candidates for you. With our industry-specific approach, advanced HR tools, and synchronized teamwork, Mobilunity’s recruiters pick the best-matching applicants for your roles.
- We help you run final interviews. Once you get the short list of candidates, it’s your turn to communicate with future teammates. Still, we can help you assess if coders will match your environment and handle the tech tasks.
- We hire developers. Our specialists get signed cooperation and non-disclosure agreements with your coders. We also take care of all the administrative tasks related to your team. That’s when your software team augmentation process is over.
Why Mobilunity Is a Reliable Staff Augmentation Partner
Mobilunity meets all the essential requirements to be called a reliable provider of developer augmentation services worldwide. We have over 10 years of experience assembling and expanding remote and on-site tech teams. We’ve built 40+ dedicated teams and hired hundreds of part-time coders in 20+ countries.
Our clients come from various domains, including MarTech, e-commerce, marketplace, SaaS, financial services, and others. They are located in the US, Canada, the UK, Japan, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, and Spain, to name a few. Mobilunity’s recruiters have found programmers with niche skillsets, on complex markets, and in a short time.
Not Sure How to Approach Software Staff Augmentation? Ask Mobilunity for Help!
All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.
