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IT staff augmentation offers expanded possibilities for creating outstanding software for those who have mastered it. The rest may be disappointed with the complexities of this method. In this article, we’ve gathered the latest best practices, tips and trends for you to make the experience of cooperation with external staff pleasant and effective.
If you plan to expand your existing team and hire software developers in Poland, Ukraine or other countries, famous for their tech talents — these staff augmentation best practices examples will help you adopt this method even without previous experience in remote cooperation.
The staff augmentation model will help you get to your goals faster and within the lower budget. The initial point of this way is, naturally, the establishment of clear and countable ‘point B’ where you need to get. It comprises such documented information as the project scope, deliverables you expect to get, the desired timelines, and the success criteria.
Documenting this information, you ensure that both in-house and the augmented staff are on the same page and can refresh this information in their memory when needed. The alignment with the project objectives will help the whole team move the work in careful coordination.
Establishing clear key performance indicators (KPIs) is among the most useful IT staff augmentation best practices, as it helps to control the effectiveness of work. Introduce them during a detailed onboarding and then check on the regular status meetings and milestone check-ins.
If you compare project outsourcing with staff augmentation, you’ll see that the first approach doesn’t require your internal team. Meanwhile, the second one implies the presence of the core team under your management.
Access the skills and expertise of your available team and compare them with what is needed for project building. The gaps are to be filled by the external engineers. The required precise evaluation to onboard only those professionals that completely match your skill gaps, and will contribute to the project most of all.
To optimize the expenses for the staffed workforce, define the team composition. Think whether you want to see one senior developer with a wide set of skills or several middle or junior-level coders who will cover different routine tasks and work with different parts of the code. Also, try to analyze future needs and upcoming trends to plan future team augmentation.
The right stuff augmentation model comprises cooperation with engineers, project managers, analysts, designers and any other required staff at a distance. Often within different time zones and in different languages. It requires extra skills from team managers and specialized tools to make the collaboration smooth and productive.
To streamline communication in remote work and track projects, crews communicate via remote-friendly tools like Jira, Slack, or Microsoft Teams. These tools are the most popular in the IT sector due to their secure and handy messaging, video calls, and document sharing.
Cloud computing is also among the IT staff augmentation best practices, as it helps to eliminate infrastructure limitations. AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure will help each team member perform their best. DevOps tools like Docker and Kubernetes will help automate the processes and speed up deployment. For improved results and faster onboarding, the outstaffed employees should be trained to work with the tools you are going to use.
Integrate top-tier professionals into your team to fill skill gaps and boost productivity.
The right staff augmentation model always shows great efficiency. However, it requires significant management skills and in-house leadership involvement. To measure the impact of the involved staff, the productivity tracking should be continuous.
How to manage staff augmentation thoroughly but without micromanagement? Build up the rules at the very beginning. Set up quantifiable efficiency rates, stick smaller milestones to the project roadmap, and establish clear requirements for code quality and adherence to deadlines.
Communication tools like Jira, Asana, or Trello, help to make the process transparent and constantly monitor the workflow. They allow not only the managers and stakeholders to control the work. The whole team is aware of the current, completed, and upcoming tasks, and the product owner’s expectations.
Use regular performance reviews and result demos as a time to identify and discuss the strong and weak sides of the team. Encourage managers to address issues proactively and offer ways for improvement.
Software product development is much of an interaction of people in the team. Honest and constructive feedback, timely discussion of issues, and friendly interpersonal chatting are the cornerstones of efficient communication. And if you work much with the distributed teams, staff augmentation improves your communication skills.
To build trusted and clear connections with remote employees, integrate them into the organization’s communication channels from the very beginning. Host the intro meeting to introduce new team members to the in-house part of the crew.
Clear guidelines and protocols should be established before the project begins and introduced in the initial phase. The whole team should have access to the documented guidelines.
Don’t miss regular status updates and feedback sessions to share and receive news on the project. It helps all the parties to stay on the same page and improves trust in the team and alignment with the business needs.
All types of staff augmentation require team building. In fact, inviting remote employees into your in-house engineering department requires more work to bring people together. Remote team-building activities are also possible.
You can use almost any activity where all the team members are involved for bonding. The meeting host (whether it is a project manager, team leader, scrum master or whoever you have in the team) should ensure everyone is involved in the general discussion, heard and valued.
For team building, you can use such activities as brainstorming sessions, hackathons, and online games. You can organize a Counter-Strike championship within the team or host a Mafia session via Zoom. Informal activities build warm interpersonal relationships between the in-house and remote staff, foster a sense of belonging, and break down communication barriers.
Staff augmentation best practices always pay attention to the comfort of all the participants, as it impacts positively the overall productivity.
Integrate top-tier professionals into your team to fill skill gaps and boost productivity.
Multiple operations and constant communication make the staff augmentation approach a mechanism with thousands of wires. And it is impossible to control every wire personally and stay productive. You would need several efficient managers close at hand. They will share the responsibility, enhance control, and improve processes.
The team manager will maintain accountability and facilitate the coordination of every team member. The responsibilities of this role include also serving as a contact point between stakeholders and the staff, as well as between the in-house and remote staff.
The project manager will also oversee the tasks and ensure that workflows are optimal for the team, tasks are understood and assigned respectively, and deadlines are met.
Strong line managers foster efficiency and thorough coordination of all processes. In turn, delicate coordination prevents miscommunication and ensures that your team works to achieve your business goals.
The remote workforce involvement implies numerous pitfalls. Being aware of them means being prepared. Ensure smooth and effective augmentation process by addressing these challenges proactively:
Challenge | Solution |
Skill Mismatch | Access your internal resources thoroughly to identify the skill gaps. Pay attention to the vendor’s recruitment process to assure that they will evaluate candidates attentively to find the exact matches. Participate in the final interview to check the candidates before approval. |
Troubled Integration | Ask your vendor about the onboarding assistance. Participate proactively in the process of new employees integration into the core team. Assign mentors for the outstaffed developers to ensure they have a contact to address in case of any questions or troubles. |
Miscommunication | From the beginning, establish clear communication protocols. Adopt handy tools for instant messaging, video calls, and file sharing. Project management tools and regular meetings will help control the whole process, and access communication issues early. |
Security Threats | Ensure your communication channels are private and safe for discussing the confidential information. Strict security policies and NDAs will make employees keep secret credentials and other sensitive information. Limited role-based access ensures information spreading only for the right people. |
External Expertise Dependence | Balance outstaffing with in-house team training and expanding to avoid critical dependence. Organize a knowledge transfer process to keep all the important data and instructions available for the next possible employees. |
Productivity Tracking | Start onboarding with the presentation of your expectations: KPIs, deliverables, etc. The performance monitoring tools will help automate the control. Regular feedback sessions ensure both stakeholders and performers are satisfied with the cooperation results. |
Legal Compliance | Check thoroughly the regulations of a country where your developers are from. If needed, drum up support of a legal consultant. Cooperate with the reputable vendor to ensure compliance with the local regulations. |
The trusted software development partner is the one who has a vast experience in outstaffing and working in the international teams. They possess a large talent base and use all the best practices to improve the performance and overcome challenges.
With 20 years of operating on a global market, Talmatic is ready to support you on the way to outstanding software. Based on your request, we’ll start the recruiting process and help you onboard the best specialists to boost your team. You will have our support and gentle assistance throughout the way until your software is ready to win the market.
05.03.2025
Looking to hire remote software developers but have a few questions unanswered? We are sharing our list of frequently asked questions by our clients when hiring software developers.
view allIn the managed capacity, the external team builds your software, while augmented staff joins your internal team.
It is a flexible business model allowing hiring individual external IT experts on a temporary basis.
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