Staff augmentation refers to a flexible staffing model designed to supplement your workforce with temporary niche-down team members that boost the process, educate staff and allow you to close out projects cost-effectively.
Staff augmentation, also known as team augmentation, has quickly become an increasingly popular option for businesses. It gained a special place in the cooperation market during COVID since it was a time when agility and flexibility in software development were core strengths to stay relevant and competitive.
When you use this cooperation model, you hire skilled developers to either cover the entire development under your management or to expand your team. Regardless of the purpose, team augmentation allows companies to save money they spend on recruitment, reduce the time needed to find specialists and benefit from unique skills.
In the era of digital transformation and remote work, businesses know that they can now save money on more valuable things, and team augmentation is the best choice for them. However, it also comes with its own risks and cons. Below you will see a list of pros and cons of staff augmentation in 2022.
Table of Contents
Pros
Quickly Expand Your Team
There are times for businesses when hiring new full-time employees seems unavailable due to many reasons. And we all know that time is essential if you want to cover changing user needs. So there can be an urgent need to hire experts in the field. While recruiting new candidates can take months, team augmentation provides many candidates based on your unique needs and requirements, allowing you to get the developer within 5-10 business days.
Scalability
COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for businesses to stay agile. That is why being able to scale and stay flexible in modern conditions is a huge plus for any business. So when you use team augmentation services, such companies work on a contract basis, meaning you can fire them and hire them whenever you need. This allows you to scale upwards or downwards depending on demand and help manage any turbulency in the market.
Reduce the Need for Training
When you work in a specific niche or need new skills, you can always train your in-house employees. However, it takes both money and time – usually several months until they will be ready to deliver results. Instead, you can hire an experienced augmentation team, like Deazy, where you get skilled experts with relevant backgrounds and expertise, reducing the need for training.
Expertise
When you run a business or project that requires unique skills, it could be a real problem for you to find specialists with relevant skills. However, team augmentation agencies usually have developers with unique skills and expertise, allowing any business to benefit from backgrounds that they wouldn’t find anywhere.
Cost-Efficiency
It is one of the most appealing benefits of team augmentation. Hiring in-house employees not only means a relevant and stable salary regardless of the load but also means providing insurance, benefits packages, paid holidays and sick days. With staff augmentation, you are free from all these pluses, meaning you pay only for the hours developers work and nothing more.
Cons
Team augmentation has many benefits, making it an excellent choice for many businesses in various fields. However, each company has its own needs, timelines and budget, so you should also know the cons of choosing an augmented team to ensure your choice is best for your business goals. Let’s explore them below:
Higher Long-Term Cost
If you decide to increase your capacity in a longer-term project while you expected that it would take only a few months, it may result in more labour costs. But the thing is that you will pay skilled people with unique backgrounds, so the return on investment will also be high. But it also depends on the staff augmentation provider you work with since everyone has their costs and conditions.
Onboarding
Even though one of the benefits of choosing team augmentation is reduced need for hiring, you will still need to provide a detailed onboarding process for every new team member. This will take some time. But if you hire experienced developers and show documentation, they will quickly adjust to the process and start working as soon as possible.
Added Processes
When new members join the team, they may bring new processes into development. However, it can turn into a plus for your business since they may have more experience than your in-house teams. But it will require your team and you to adjust to new processes and maybe require investment.
Lack of Internal Knowledge
Some projects may require specific knowledge about the work or client they’re working with, which only in-house employees will know. Not knowing the start of the projects, the client or some specific things about the process may result in bugs and poor-quality work. So make sure you explain everything needed to new team members during onboarding, even if it takes time.
