The Top Ways To Increase Software Team Productivity with Staff Augmentation

Introduction – Productivity with Staff Augmentation

A successful staff augmentation means increased software team productivity. But, what do you need to do to ensure you achieve a successful staff augmentation? You need to communicate, define roles and process workflows, apply management tools, maintain a code record and be ready for flexibility. Apart from helping to increase your company’s software team productivity, it is also a good strategy for cutting company costs while maintaining quality services. But what is staff augmentation? Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy that businesses, organizations, or companies use to rapidly scale their internal staff to meet the Information Technology needs. Read on to discover the top ways to increase software team productivity with staff augmentation.

Is there clear communication at all times?

Did you know that approximately 86% of executives and employees cite lack of proper communication and collaboration as the critical factor for workplace failures? Mainly this issue comes with offshoring. Nearshore firms headquartered in the United States can make the process of contracting a new staff simple when staff augmenting.

Additionally, implementing a system that supports clear communication in any organization is essential to ensuring that each development project succeeds. So, companies must establish processes in advance in the development cycle to promote open communication.

For instance, during the next board meeting, you can recommend messaging app Slack, a project management tool that can encourage employees to share ideas among themselves. Ideas sharing help your staff to work in collaboration, thus increasing the overall productivity.

In any outsourcing process, communication deficiency can have detrimental effects like misunderstandings which narrow down to project failure. That is not something that any company would want to experience. So, the bottom line here is to ensure that there is a running system that promotes open communication when augmenting staff.

Have you defined roles and assessed workflows?

Defining roles is critical among the top ways to increase software team productivity with staff augmentation. According to Forbes Magazine, “Every single job in a company has vast importance, and far too often people lack an appreciation or an understanding of just how impactful each position is to the overall success or failure of a business.”

When you define the roles of each project participant, it becomes easy to meet and follow up on each responsibility and obligation.

You should develop a means for external and internal developers to understand your project’s underlying principles comprehensively. This information will help them figure out how to fit into your company’s vision.

For instance, you can begin with assigning team leaders and project managers. Their roles will be ensuring that each person taking part in the project completes their respective tasks on time and meets the expected standard. With clearly defined roles, developers will have a point of contact to share ideas and give feedback.

Don’t forget to implement development workflows if you want your staff augmentation to be effective. What does this mean? It means that every staff should know the independent steps involved throughout the project. These steps include even the scheduled meetings.

There is a need for embracing management tools, technologies and productivity with Staff Augmentation

As noted in Forbes Magazine, “technological trends have now entered the scene for business owners to explore,” and the case is not different with staff augmentation. So, to achieve the best results out of an augmented team of professionals, your company needs to embrace project management technologies and tools.

There are multiple such tools that your organization can use, including;

• Jira
• Asana
• Basecamp

These technological tools will help you keep track of the ongoing and pending projects. How do they achieve this? It is pretty simple. The above tools have installed systems that monitor the progress of each project at each stage of the development cycle.

The 2015 Project Management Institute’s report found that companies, organizations, and businesses applying any project management methodology experienced several benefits. For instance, they were better at following the schedule, meeting budget, complying with quality standards, meeting expected benefits and scope.

Have you documented all coding?

Every software application needs code documentation to run effectively. So, companies augmenting staff should go the extra mile of ensuring that the extended teams maintain a record of their codes. Maintaining code records should be at every project stage.

Another thing you need to know is that software requires constant monitoring. So, you may have to assign individuals from the augmented team to update and maintain the software constantly.

Additionally, you would be ahead of most of your competitors if your group included multiple developers with the ability to read and interpret codes. In that case, it will be easier to spot potential risks and bugs throughout each project stage.

With a tool like Swagger, you will implement transparent methodologies that the team will use for code documentation. Other vital practices like pair programming also come into play.

Is the company prepared for flexibility?

The top ways to increase software team productivity with staff augmentation include preparing for flexibility. It is easier to integrate an augmented team into your company if it encourages flexibility. And as Entrepreneur Magazine notes, nowadays, many companies and businesses have learned that “a flexible approach may serve as a competitive advantage in companies’ hiring processes.”

For that reason, it is under very improbable situations that companies that are maintaining a rigid development process end in the desired outcome.

Agile is a development methodology that has continually enabled teams to achieve positive results due to being more flexible. Upon contracting an augmented crew, you will realize that the company will always require a certain compromise level. The good thing about expanded teams is that they know how to work with in-house developers.

Additionally, they often offer incredible insights into best practices of the workflow. So a more flexible company’s system encourages feedback so that an augmented team can establish better and more efficient methodologies of completing the ongoing projects.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is productivity with staff augmentation a model to extend your team?

In the IT sector, outsourcing strategies like staff augmentation target hiring skilled technicians and their resources from external staff augmentation firms. The purpose is to temporarily or permanently fill necessary positions in your team, thus allowing you to reduce or extend your team.

What are the benefits of productivity with staff augmentation?

• Scalability
• It promotes highly-skilled short-term services that contribute to successful projects.
• It helps businesses keep ahead of the curve
• It helps companies cut operational costs.
• It allows enterprises to elevate efficiency while keeping costs low.
• It is a good way of saving on time.
• There is better management through staff augmentation.

What is the difference between staff augmentation and managed services?

Under a managed services form, providers commit themselves to deliver an ‘outcome’ at a special price. In contrast, in the staff augmentation model, the providers generally devote themselves to giving an ‘input.’ The only service commitment under the staff augmentation model is work hours.

What is staff augmentation in consulting?

In consulting, staff augmentation is a strategy that consists of contracting a range of resources and expertise to help a business completely crack a particular project. Although some firms often apply the word consultant to their staff-aug model, the traditional sense of knowledge does not consider it consulting.

Who uses staff augmentation?

Any firm, company, or business can use staff augmentation to get services from candidates with specific skillsets that they need within a certain timeframe. It begins with the business or company’s need to respond to specific objectives, evaluate existing employees, and establish the additional particular skills they require.

What is the difference between staff augmentation and consulting?

Your business or company pays for only one outsourced staff with staff augmentation. Conversely, consulting services involve outsourcing a range of resources and expertise to boost the organization completely crack the project. Therefore, you can expect to spend more money on consulting than with staff augmentation.

What is a staff augmentation project?

A staff augmentation project is a process of recruiting candidates with exceptional skills and expertise and linking them to client firms that need those skills. The project’s ultimate aim is to staff your business project and ensure you meet your business objectives.

What is the opposite of staff augmentation?

The direct opposite of staff augmentation is project outsourcing. It has multiple significant variances from staff augmentation. It involves an IT outsourcing agency recruiting, training, and managing a team of professionals with special skills to deal with the development tasks your company has assigned them.

What’s another word for augmentation?

Augmentation has multiple synonyms, including increase, boost, increment, expansion, escalation, addition, gain, and enlargement.

What is a managed services model?

A managed services model or a fully outsourced model is a different outsourcing type covering all Information Technology functions. Here, the provider is in charge of the entire technology decisions provided they are within its parameters.

How much does staff augmentation cost?

The cost of outsourcing IT services varies from region to region. For instance, the rate is $18 to $40 per hour in Asia and $20 to $40 hourly in Africa. It is $35 to $50 in Europe and $40 to $55 in South America.

What is the meaning of staffing in management?

It refers to recruiting staff by evaluating their knowledge and skills and then assigning them specific job roles. So, there is less involvement of staffing and recruitment agencies in staffing in management. It has more to do with a company’s internal hiring operations.

What is meant by outsourcing?

Outsourcing is one of the cost-cutting measures that businesses apply by hiring a third-party company to perform specific services or create particular goods.

What is an augmentation engineer?

Augmentation engineering can either be electrical or mechanical engineering. Generally, it is the practice of using personnel from external parties to augment your business capacity. It keeps work moving forward.

What is meant by body shopping in recruitment?

Consultancy firms are the primary beneficiaries of body shopping. It is, therefore, the practice of these firms recruiting workers to lease their services out to other client firms on a short-term to mid-term basis. The recruitment of workers is mainly in the IT sector.

What makes a well-managed service?

A well-managed service must meet regulatory and compliance standards while maintaining security, integrity, and data management. It is essential to note that they need to meet these obligations without giving up the user experience, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

What is Managed Service software?

It is an application that you can download immediately but requires individual configuration for every account.

How do you choose a managed IT service?

To choose the best managed IT service, you need to look at the following things;

• Fast response and service time
• Availability
• Disaster recovery planning
• Third-party dealer affiliations
• Daily cloud services and backups
• Local support and maintenance which are on-site
• Yearly Information Technology budget planning
• Security monitoring and testing

How do I choose a managed IT service provider?

If you require a managed service provider for your IT business, follow the following tips to get the best;

• Ask for references and use them accordingly.
• Find someone with a proper understanding of your business.
• Allow the potential candidate for the job to ask you questions.
• Ask the potential MSP if they can offer you anything outside the scope of IT services.
• Ask if your potential MSP candidate if they outsource any of their services.
• Look for the MSP who manifests a proactive approach.
• Avoid MSPs who strictly rate their services by the hour.
• Don’t concentrate too much on the up-front cost that you will incur to manage your network.

What is the future of managed services?

A Mordor Intelligence report points out that the international managed services market had a value of approximately $152.05 billion in 2020. By 2026, Mordor Intelligence expects this market to grow to $274.20 billion, indicating the relevance of the managed services and how they are here to stay.

Why Should You Choose Sonatafy?

In conclusion, this article has highlighted the top ways to increase software team productivity with staff augmentation that you certainly need to know.

When you choose Sonatafy Technology, your company gets to earn a wide range of benefits. The benefits include:

• Nearshore staff augmentation.
• The use of standard technologies that your in-house staff will understand.
• Flexible staff augmentation solutions.

We have technicians with incredible English fluency and top-tier talent. The high standards of professionalism guide our complete package of web designers, software developers, and UI UX designers. That’s not all. We service our clients at competitive market prices.

Feel free to contact us today to get more information about improving your company’s performance.