In general, offshore staff augmentation stands out due to its agile development methodologies, which are highly advantageous for organizations.
Are you in need of a team that can operate only till the project is finished? Well, offshore staff augmentation is the strategy you should apply. This strategy keeps relations for a particular period, it strengthens the bond between the vendors, developers, and the employer.
If your in-house team is operating ineffectively and you’re searching for a solution to improve your product quality, then this article will provide a fundamental understanding of offshore staff augmentation, and the difference between popular offshoring and augmentation strategies.
What is Offshore Staff Augmentation?
Offshore staff augmentation is a popular practice among IT firms to hire a developer or a team of developers on a contractual basis from an offshore location to fill the resource gap.
This strategy allows IT firms to scale their projects and teams to produce quality products. Having said that, offshore staff augmentation solely focuses on benefiting organizations by hiring experts from different parts of the world.
Why is Offshore Staff Augmentation Needed?
The answer is to gain expert professionals.
Many companies are facing challenges in finding expert developers to scale their operations and fulfill their objectives. They continuously look for ideal solutions to practice quality development practices. Offshore staff augmentation is one of those agile methodologies that focuses on providing companies with expert professionals to elevate their development operations.
1. Easy Adaptation to New Technologies
· Nowadays, IT companies are eager to provide innovative products based on advanced technologies like AI, blockchain, and NFT as well as their solutions. Certainly, it takes more than just training to make the in-house team gain expertise in these domains and provide quality products.
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· Besides, these would consume a lot of time and resources to adapt to a domain-based tech stack. On the other hand, augmented experts might already be familiar with these technologies and tech stacks. Therefore, it makes more sense to hire contract developers to gain traction in these domains. Hence, offshore staff augmentation has been favored by various tech giants to provide innovative solutions.
2. Maximized Client Control
· Keeping control over the development phase is important to direct product development in the right direction. Offshore staff augmentation offers maximized client control over these development aspects to perform necessary alterations in the product as per market and technology trends.
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· Moreover, it allows clients to monitor and track the developers’ tasks and progress during the development phase to ensure everything is executed as planned.
3. Scaled Operations
· Offshore staff augmentation allows easy scaling of teams and increases product development pace. Especially for startups, this might be useful as they need to scale their production and teams at a faster rate to produce products and gain traction in the market.
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· A client can even introduce new hires while the development is ongoing whenever required to provide more support to the development team. Indeed, this pushes product development to gain maximum momentum.
4. Increased Flexibility
· Tech markets are unpredictable. No one can guarantee what comes next. Though it is estimated that technical trends will drive the tech markets. This is where offshore staff augmentation shines, as it allows clients to imply changes in the development process as per market trends.
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· If a particular domain gets equipped with new functionalities, then clients can effectively take measures and plan strategies to further enhance the product by implementing those new functionalities.
Benefits of Offshore Staff Augmentation
1. Cost Effective Approach
· Cost plays a vital role in development practices, and if you own a startup, then chances are you have a tight budget to operate within. One of the reasonable benefits of offshore staff augmentation is that it cuts costs.
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· Compared to in-house teams or developers, offshore talents are generally hired from countries with low salary offerings. That being said, they are cheaper to hire and they do not require any additional benefits and perks like an in-house team. Hence, offshore staff augmentation allows companies to significantly cut down costs, from insurance to electricity and real estate.
2. Access to a Larger Pool of Talent
· The offshore staff augmentation methodology was created to develop quality products with the help of offshore professionals.
· Many IT companies struggle with a severe lack of talented and skilled engineers, so they look to attract the top 5% of developers worldwide.
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· These skilled developers are experts in their domain and are capable of solving complex product development scenarios.
· For this reason, they are preferred over the in-house developers. Moreover, they have a ton of experience working on crucial roles that in-house teams will fail to perform. Since these talents can be found in different parts of the world, offshore staff augmentation has gained huge momentum in the IT industry.
Is Staff Augmentation the same as Outsourcing?
There are many misconceptions regarding offshore staff augmentation being the same as outsourcing, but it is not. Outsourcing solely focuses on handing over the entire project to an IT firm that will be responsible for managing and controlling its development phases and deploying the product within a given deadline.
Offshore staff augmentation solely focuses on hiring qualified professionals from a vendor to get collaborative operations of an in-house team and offshore developers to fill resource gaps and produce quality products. Here, the clients will be responsible for managing, controlling, and tracking development phases.
And from the above, we can assume staff augmentation as one of the types of outsourcing because they both rely on offshore operations and have a similar goal i.e. cost-effective development.
Difference Between Offshoring and Staff Augmentation?
Outsourcing has evolved with its types to serve more efficient operations that leverage development practices, some of which are offshoring and staff augmentation. Though they have similar goals, these methodologies differ from each other in many ways.
However, the combined practice of both, offshore staff augmentation, creates a streamlined development strategy that eliminates their downsides. A more polished method is used among many tech giants to elevate their product development to new heights.
Moving ahead to differences, as the name suggests, offshoring means carrying out your development operations from an offshore location, such as from a different country with either a similar or different timezone. In this, the firm hands over its projects to a development company that manages, controls, and tracks the progress of development phases. Hence, the organization is responsible for handling any other issues arising in product development, which lets the client rest assured about their product development. TeamPlus India, Microservicing, and Next Technology are some of the popular offshore staffing companies.
Whereas, staff augmentation is the practice of onboarding qualified offshore/onshore professionals to carry out collaborative development practices. In this, an IT firm hires a team or individual developer from a vendor to fill their resource gap if they lack any skill sets for a particular project. Unlike offshore development, the in-house team and external team put their efforts together to develop effective software products. For example, Optymize, Infosys, and Accenture are some of the staff augmentation companies in India.
The Advantages of Offshoring
· 1. More Concentration on Core Business
· Offshoring allows you to hand over the project to an offshore company that manages and controls its entire operations. So the client doesn’t have to worry about their product development and can focus more on brand awareness, marketing, and other core business aspects. This can turn out to be a golden choice for startups as they run on a tight budget and have many more things on hand to work on.
· 2. A Pool of Qualified Professionals
· Since the world is full of skilled and qualified professionals, companies can access this talent pool and use it for their product advancements. Instead of relying on an in-house team that deliberately produces poor-quality products, tech firms can take an interest in maximizing their product quality at a cheaper rate.
The Disadvantages of Offshoring
· Language Barriers.
· Time Zone difference.
· Cultural difference.
· Poor production due to poor research strategies.
The Advantages of Staff Augmentation
· 1. Control
· One of the prime advantages of staff augmentation is that it lets clients hold strong control over development phases. Clients can manage, control, and track the progress of each team member and the product development easily, which lets them imply necessary changes as per market and technological trends.
· 2. Flexible Operations
· Staff augmentation is the perfect choice for quick team scaling to shoulder the development process and carry out deployment within a deadline. The clients can scale their operations whenever they like as per their needs, such as including new technologies in software solutions and to do so, extra talents can be hired.
· 3. Cost Effective Development
· Staff augmentation allows companies to cut down on unnecessary costs such as insurance, additional benefits, and perks. For this reason, most IT companies, especially startups and small businesses, prefer staff augmentation as their agile development method. Moreover, it allows companies to pay for only those specific skill sets required for a project.
The Disadvantages of Staff Augmentation
· Not suitable for long-term projects.
· Project alignment might be changed.
· Possible arguments between in-house teams and augmented teams.
Conclusion
Offshore staff augmentation is the best methodology for developing quality software products by hiring qualified professionals for a short time and at a reasonable rate. Many have scaled their teams using this strategy for effective business operations. Moreover, startups can heavily benefit from offshore staff augmentation as it cuts down on additional costs such as insurance, additional benefits, and perks, which makes it ideal for obtaining product development within a tight budget.
This article shredded some light on why and how offshore staff augmentation is impacting IT firms and changing how they work. If you are looking for a solution to scale your teams and development practices within a tight budget and in a short time, then there is no doubt that this methodology will help you achieve your objectives.
