What Is Staff Augmentation vs. Dedicated Team Model?

When you are strategizing your next software project, you think about where to find the best engineers and the ways of optimizing the development process in terms of time, budget, and human resources.

There are two great options: staff augmentation and outsourcing a dedicated team.

You might be wondering how each model works and which one will meet your business needs. Read this article to learn how workforce augmentation and dedicated development team services function, the opportunities they may uncover for your business, and tips on choosing a model to benefit your project.

Staff augmentation or team extension is an outsourcing practice that allows businesses to handpick and hire one or several tech talents externally and reinforce their in-house teams with extra skills and ideas. Depending on a particular business outsourcing strategy, cooperation may take a couple of months or last up to several years.

Business owners can determine the existing skill gaps, find candidates that meet specific project requirements, and cut or extend cooperation whenever they need.

Competent providers of IT staff augmentation services help business owners unearth valuable technical resources for different software projects. By adding external resources to their times, businesses may save considerably on full-time hires.

If you settle for augmenting your staff, you may considerably save on the following:

• You won't need to invest in additional infrastructure
  
  
• The provider is responsible for office and necessary equipment
  
  
• You will save time and resources on recruiting talents since a staff augmentation company will find perfect matches exclusively for your project
  
  
• By outsourcing more team members, you save budget on hiring extra in-house employees
  
  
• You can hire the most skillful employees around the globe
  

The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the growth of the IT staff augmentation market. According to Statista, the global outsourcing market in 2019 amounted to $92.5 billion, and during the pandemic, it has reached $132.9 billion.

What are the reasons for such growth? First, lockdown restrictions massively forced businesses to go digital and consider remote staffing and workforce augmentation more often. Customer demand for servicing online has also increased dramatically, eliminating location constraints and bringing financial benefits to providers open to remote resource and staff augmentation services.

So, by the end of 2021, Statista predicts the IT outsourcing market to hit $413.7 billion.

When you augment your team with talents, you expect them to spend 100% of their working time dealing with a single project. They don't need to switch between tasks and client projects, so they stay focused and motivated to perform their work qualitatively and in less time.

You may access a large pool of IT professionals worldwide, be they QA and test automation engineers, UI/UX consultants, web developers, or project managers. It's easier to replace engineers whenever there is a need or augment a team with new skills without spending additional resources on hiring and changing processes.

Team augmentation is fully transparent in terms of costs. Your vendor will take on responsibilities for expenses on office spaces if needed, equipment, and other organizational matters. You pay for arranging every aspect for you and can free up more time to focus on key business activities requiring your attention.

That was how we worked with Under Armour, a leading sports market player. Our engineers joined the client's team to improve app performance and implement load testing. As a result, their efforts helped the client save budget dramatically and enabled app performance tracking and monitoring whenever needed.

A dedicated team model fits clients who need to hire a software engineering team for their projects. As its name suggests, a team will exclusively work over a project it is assigned to, and it usually comes in when there is a complicated long-term project. A project manager can be from a client's in-house staff or can be offered by a staff augmentation company.

This model offers plenty of perks, like dedicated software team flexibility and scalability, making this kind of cooperation between a client and provider efficient and popular. At first glance, you may think this model is the best option for you. But don't jump to conclusions until learning what it may bring in and when it is beneficial for your business.

The process of hiring a dedicated team involves four stages. A robust approach to building a team allows a business analyst to gather all the requirements necessary to tailor a team. If you have little or no technical expertise, your provider will help out with every aspect and offer you a project manager to lead your new dedicated software developers.

At this stage, you should clearly define your requirements and expectations. Business analysts need this information to handpick the right dedicated software team for you. If you don't have technical expertise, a provider's business analysts and engineers will help you out with drawing up a list of key features, choosing the tech stack, and making a project estimation for you.

Having clear and comprehensive requirements, your provider can define what industry specialties are needed to form a dedicated team. For example, Solvd Solvd helped Start-Up Nation Central from Israel audit their current website, fix vulnerabilities, and enhance the current solution with new features. The dedicated software team involved six members:

• Project manager
  
  
• 3 PHP dedicated software developers
  
  
• Front-end developer
  
  
• QA engineer
  
  

Once the price, payment options, and project duration were discussed with the client, we moved on to the next stage.

The length of this process depends on the number of specialists you need. If your project requires 20 or over engineers, your provider may be unable to give you that many at a given moment. A provider may ask you to wait until engineers on other projects free up or recruit more talents to meet your business needs. It still will be faster and cheaper for you than searching and hiring using your resources.

When your dedicated software development team is ready, it's time to introduce them to your project. Your tasks will be to establish cooperation of your remote team with in-house specialists, support efficient communication, and explain the specifics of your workflow and company policies.

If everything is done accurately, your new team will be ready to get down to fruitful working on your project.

If you run a business in the US, Central, or Western Europe, you are likely to know that costs for dedicated software development services differ depending on the location. Thus, a senior software engineer in the US will likely charge rates much higher than those for the work of an equally skilled developer from an outsourcing destination. The latter might be two times cheaper.

In addition, you shouldn't worry about expenses on hardware and software for your new engineers. Likewise, you don't need a large office since your new employees will work remotely.

Recruiting won't be your headache anymore: a provider will care about everything. You can look through resumes and check candidates' hard skills and soft skills if you wish or fully entrust the picking process to your provider. That allows you to save time and resources on routine recruitment tasks.

A dedicated team can be led by one of your in-house project managers. But if you lack experience being in charge of the project, a provider can take on team management aspects. You can rest assured that an outside project manager will be fluent in your language and follow your company's rules and regulations.

It might be challenging to make your choice, but some simple guiding principles will assist you.

A dedicated team will work well if:

• You have a large-scale project and need talents to handle it within strict deadlines.
  
  
• Your current solution requires new features to keep up-to-date. It'll be more efficient to outsource the work to dedicated software developers well-versed in the needed technology than make new hires in-house.
  
  
• Budget constraints make dedicated development team services cheaper for you than in-house staffing.
  
  

Staff augmentation services are your best choice if:

• You have a side project that requires several specialists experienced with a particular technology or having knowledge valuable for a project.
  
  
• Your existing application requires an audit and a handful of new features or testing.
  
  
• Your project is small-scale and doesn't require a team dedicated to it. Adding several engineers to your in-house team will help remove current obstacles.

If you still have questions, need consulting on starting your project, or can't choose which model is better, the Solvd team is here to help. Let us know your challenges and business goals and rely on our expertise in delivering your best working solution.