Businesses are now scaling higher than before, thanks to the advanced ways of project management and completion. In the tech world, customer satisfaction is a key concept that shows the project has run successfully, and this makes it easy to scale a business.

However, changes in market trends, customer preferences, and emerging technologies can make it hard to accelerate business growth. In such instances, an entrepreneur must strategize how to overcome these set of challenges and streamline business progress by onboarding experts who understand the industry trends and how to meet the changing customer demands. Resource augmentation is one strategy that any business can employ to streamline business processes and achieve the set objectives.

In this guide, we explore all the insights you need to know about resource augmentation, including the processes, challenges, and tips, among others.

What is resource augmentation?

Resource augmentation is an outsourcing strategy that enables businesses to contract third-party professionals to handle a specific project or a number of projects. It is a flexible, convenient, cost-effective, and agile approach to hiring top talents to complete projects.

All established, mid-sized, and startup businesses can use the resource augmentation model and access the right talents and resources at the right time. The augmented resources work remotely together with the in-house team to accelerate project completion.

Benefits of Resource Augmentation

So, why would a business opt to hire through resource augmentation? Below are the top IT staff augmentation benefits businesses get from the resource augmentation outsourcing model.

• Cost Efficiency

Through resource augmentation, you eliminate the extra costs of hiring permanent employees who will need salaries and benefits, and you will have to spend extra resources on training. Resource augmentation allows you to onboard specific skilled personnel when the need arises, hence no long-term commitments, yet you get high-quality work in a timely manner, thus giving you room to utilize the resources to grow your business.

• Hiring flexibility

One aspect that will make many businesses prefer resource augmentation is the flexibility of this model. Business owners only need to hire and onboard employees when the need arises. The augmented team focuses on working with a company within a specified timeline, depending on the type and nature of the project. This gives business owners adequate time to plan and allocate resources where necessary while scaling their businesses in a flexible and convenient manner.

• Access to top talents

Getting professionals or experts in a specific area is a common challenge in modern organizations. For these reasons, many companies are opting to hire through the freelancing model to choose the best talents.

Through resource augmentation, business owners don’t need to worry about onboarding professionals to fill specific gaps in modern businesses. They can adjust their operations based on their business requirements by hiring experts with diverse skills, experience, and backgrounds as they accelerate business scalability.

• Better project management

Resource augmentation allows businesses to onboard experts from another company while maintaining ultimate control over the teams and projects at large.

Ideally, resource augmentation allows outsourcing of human resources to another agency, thus giving your company the total responsibility of managing and controlling the progress of a project.

• Enhanced scalability

Resource augmentation allows entrepreneurs to scale their businesses in the most appropriate ways. Instead of spending on full-time employees, which can be expensive, companies can opt to try resource augmentation as they expand their business steadily. This enables businesses to adapt to the changing market trends by hiring required experts at a specific timeframe.

Above all, a company can hire through resource augmentation to review and test the skills and capabilities of the augmented teams before committing to a long-term basis. In the end, this ensures the company onboards teams that will not only complete the project but enhance business scalability through delivering high-quality services.

• Access to specific talents

The market trends are changing drastically, and businesses need to adapt to the norm. Businesses need to adapt to the trending changes in a flexible manner to allow business flexibility. However, this can be hard for organizations, especially when relying on their in-house teams to become experts in such areas.

Instead of waiting, businesses can quickly hire through resource augmentation and fill specific skills in the required timeframe. As a result, the project will be completed in a timely manner, and still remain of high quality, thanks to resource augmentation.

How to onboard staff augmentation successfully: Step-by-step

So, you’ve made up your mind to hire through resource augmentation. However, you have one challenge where to begin the whole process. Follow the steps below and onboard the best talents, ensuring your project has all the skillsets required from experts.

• Define the missing skills and requirements in your company

Of course, you have your in-house team. However, your in-house team may not have all the skills required to compete specific projects or to scale your business in a flexible manner.

Start by identifying missing skills within your team. Is it agile project management? Is it machine learning algorithms? Ideally, it can be any skill. Once you identify the skill gap, highlight the project requirements and the delivery timelines. These details will help you plan the next phases in a seamless manner while maintaining the company’s vision.

• Budgeting and selecting a reliable model

Next, you need to work with a specific budget. You need to get the best talents without overspending.

Therefore, at this stage, decide if you need a senior expert in the missing skill gap or if a mid-experience expert will do so. This will give you an idea of where or who your ideal team will be.

After budgeting, decide on the practical pricing model.

Is it Time and material? Here, you simply pay for resources and time invested in your company. When your project requirements are likely to change along the way, use the time and material pricing model to be on the safe side.

Again, you can choose a fixed price model whereby you agree on a specific amount without factoring in the resources and time invested in your project. Go for this model when the project requirements are well-defined with clear delivery timelines.

A monthly retainer is another pricing model where you pay a certain amount monthly for regular augmentation services. Go for this model when you intent to retain the team for a long term working on specific workloads.

• Choose a staff augmentation partner

After identifying the missing talent, budgeting, and selecting the pricing model, you can now start looking for a staff augmentation partner to collaborate with and actualize your project. Aalpha Information Systems, is your next augmented partner. We have expert software developers and other top talents in the tech field who will work on your project and ensure the timely delivery of exceptional results.

Note: as you seek the best resource augmentation partner for your business, don’t forget to check and review customer reviews to ensure you get the right team. Ask for referrals too from your friends with similar experiences as yours.

• Signing contracts and agreement

Once you get your ideal resource augmentation partner, you need something that will bind you. That is why you need to sign service level agreements – SLAs and contracts defining your terms of engagement and services.

In the contracts, define responsibilities, payment amounts & terms, and the professional relationship connecting you with the extended teams.

Service law agreements define the responsibilities, benchmarks, quality, and availability. These terms ensure that both teams are working towards a common goal, with the augmented team understanding what is expected from them.

• Choose communication channels

Communication is a key aspect that will accelerate the success of your project completion with the augmented team. Besides, regular and effective communication ensures the project is headed in the right direction, with both teams working in the same direction.

Therefore, choose communication channels that will keep communication alive throughout the engagement period. Slack, for instant, can be a perfect option to resolve issues, while emails could be the best option for formal inquiries.

Once you select and agree on a reliable communication channel, choose the protocols that will guide you throughout. For instance, should there be an emergency, who should be accountable?

Regular video calls will also be a perfect idea when you need to track the progress of the project and give feedback.

• Training

At this point, you have almost everything in order. However, before the project begins, train the augmented team so that they understand your company’s tools, standards, and practices.

This ensures that despite the augmented teams adding extra value to your company, they maintain the norms and standards of your company from all angles.

• Define KPIs and assessment mechanisms

KPIs are used to determine the productivity and effectiveness of staff augmentation. They will help you track the following:

Project completion rate – how well the augmented teams can accomplish the project in the specified timeline. It shows the success rate of augmented teams in meeting project objectives and deadlines.

Time-to-productivity – shows the productivity rate of the augmented teams after joining your in-house team. It projects the effectiveness or validates the concept of onboarding augmented members.

Productivity index – measures if the work delivered by the augmented teams meets the expected performance, exceeds the performance levels or underperforms as anticipated.

Pro tip: perform evaluation tests more often to identify issues, if any, in the early stages. Code quality, for instance helps the teams review and identify bugs or issues and fix them before they can become costly in the later stages.

• Project documentation

Project documentation is all about planning how to safeguard the project details, enabling easy access by the in-house team even when the project is complete, and the contract with the augmented teams is over.

Don’t forget to put in place measures or processes to follow during project handover and exit interviews.

• Review legal compliance and data security

At this point, you have successfully onboarded augmented resources and collaborated with them successfully.

Apart from signing an NDA to protect your property, the augmented teams also have all the details you should strategize on how to respond to incidents and notifications in case of data security leaks.

That is why you should always review the data security protocols or procedures of the country where you outsourced your augmented teams.

How to know you need resource augmentation

There are instances that will show you your company needs augmented resources. But then, how can you tell it is about time you extended your team through resource augmentation? Here are some highlights

• You need a specific skill set for your project

When you have a complex or unique project that requires specific expertise that is missing from your in-house team, you know it is about time you considered resource augmentation.

Start the processes to ensure you get the right personnel to fill the gap and accelerate the completion of the project with high quality guaranteed.

• You want to extend your existing team quickly

Maybe you want to accelerate the development of a project at hand, and you feel your in-house team is small. Instead of starting the processes of hiring permanent employees and spending time and many resources, you can consider resource augmentation and expand your team in a seamless and scalable manner.

• You are looking for cost-effective services

When you need your project completed faster with high quality without over spending, resource augmentation is the ultimate solution. With resource augmentation, you only hire a developers team to fill a specific gap, and in most cases, you simply pay for services rendered. This saves you more costs, allowing you to expand your business without feeling drained financially.

• When your project has a tight deadline

Sometimes, your in-house team can have all the required skills to handle a project. However, when the project is huge and complex, it can be hard to push the teams to meet the deadline. Extreme pressure may affect the quality of the final project.

Therefore, resource augmentation becomes a viable solution in such a scenario. Add an augmented team to combine efforts and accelerate project delivery, ensuring you don’t miss any deadlines.

Conclusion

Many businesses are opting for resource augmentation thanks to the flexibility, convenience, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of this hiring model. However, there are several resource augmentation challenges that cannot go unnoticed such as team integration, regulatory requirements, cultural differences, communication issues, and business scalability, among other set of challenges.

The key to overcoming these challenges is to follow the step-by-step processes of onboarding augmented resources as you complete each phase to perfection. In the end, everything will fall in place and accelerate project completion to high standards.

Any queries? Get in touch with our offshore outsourcing company : Aalpha Information Systems!