Highlights: IT Staff Augmentation service

Without a doubt, companies are looking for the best strategies to fulfill their projects with top-level specialists. IT Staff Augmentation service allows you to hire external resources. Firstly, this helps to quickly scale your internal team to meet the current requirements. And, in addition to this, you get lots of benefits including cost reduction.

But how does IT Staff Augmentation work? Get prepared for some insights while replying to this question.

The strategy highlights: How does IT Staff Augmentation work?

In general, Staff Augmentation is a process of hiring an additional specialist to the existing full-time team. Unlike the usual hiring, you can get a person temporarily to simply complete the required task or project. This approach helps to get the highly-qualified and narrowly-aimed professionals when you don’t need to extend the team permanently.

Here are some facts for more understanding of IT staff augmentation service:

Who can use IT Staff Augmentation service

This way to hire a development team is recommended for companies who meet the following requirements:

You have a full-time team working in your office. However, you would like to extend your team. Of course, you need to hire a developer or any other expert with high-level skills, but you don’t want to allocate resources.

Your team is working on a product, and you want more specialized people to join in. Let’s say you need new ideas and fresh input. The stack of experts you need might not be available nearby. For sure, you can look for an IT staffing company, which can offer professionals from a different geographical location.

Have doubts about IT outsourcing? Take a look at our previous article IT outsourcing situation: sunset or rise?

IT Staff Augmentation service at Crysberry

IT Staff Augmentation service provided by our company allows you to gain a complex scalable product:

• Recruiting based on your business goals and corporate culture.
• Providing you with separate IT professionals or building a dedicated team for your project.
• HR support for your team.

You can find general cooperation flow on the dedicated page.

However, when a new client comes to us, we offer three different cooperation scenarios.

Scenario #1

A new client can hire our in-house IT specialist, which is free from any other project. However, if we don’t have in-house specialists we can offer one of the below scenarios.

Scenario #2

A new client wants to hire a developer but has specific needs. After providing the list of requirements to an IT expert, our recruiting team gets to work. The process includes:

• research;
• interviewing;
• preparation of a specialist;
• hiring a person for our company (in-house).

When we hire a developer in-house according to a client’s requirements and project, the client doesn’t have to pay recruitment fees. However, it allows a client to get a recruitment service and further outstaffing simultaneously.

Scenario #3

We can offer one of the experts from our talent pool. It consists of the Ukrainian professionals we have worked with before. If a client has special requirements, we can hire a developer from this pool in-house.

General Onboarding Process for IT staff augmentation service at Crysberry

The process of onboarding a new specialist during IT staff augmentation service consist of several stages:

• Requirement gathering.
• First touch-interview.
• Technical English interview.
• CV, Portfolio for a client.
• A client’s final decision.

We do not involve a client during the first three stages not to waste their time. The only thing we need from a client is a list of requirements to a developer for a project. However, if a client would like to participate in each or specific stages, they are welcome to join our team in the selection process. This is one of the advantages, which not all IT staff augmentation companies can offer.

We have two flows here. Let’s discuss them further.

Flow 1 — The general one

Our Sales Team collects the requirements from a client. After that, we conduct the first stages on our own to provide the client with a CV and/or Portfolio of the best candidates to choose and hire a developer. Usually, we offer to check 1-3 specialists at the end.

Flow 2 — The flexible one

Our Sales Team collects the requirements of a client. Also, they confirm with the client questions for the interview. While conducting the interview we make a record and send it to a client. After that, we invite a client to the final interview. In general, we can discuss with a client any flow of his interaction during all the stages.

Usually, all the stages can take from 3 days to several weeks, which depends on the complexion of the demand.

Staff Augmentation Case Study

We would like to share a case study of what is staff augmentation on practice.

We received a request for experts to create with existing design choosing a suitable game mechanic. Also, it was needed to add a tracking system for users’ achievements with a connection to a database, and to create lacking arts for the apps. One of the additional challenges was to synchronize devices users might use.

With the client’s approval, our developer had weekly meetings with the client’s team to get reports, check the requirements and plan tasks for the next week. This was followed by everyday communication in Slack messenger. We tracked all the requirements and progress using Jira. As a result, we got 2 mini-games in about 8 months.

(Read more: Overview: tools for project tracking)

We have another option for those, who are ready to move the whole development process to our side and hire a development team. It’s called Research and Development. Check more details here.

Summary

Our recruiters are constantly working on the fulfillment of 2-3 refreshing positions per each person. Usually, we have a minimum of 5 candidates per position. This provides us with an opportunity to update the talent pool every week.

If a client comes to us for experts, we have experienced tech professionals for managing newcomers we onboard. Also, we have a recruitment backup pool, which allows us to fulfill the whole recruitment cycle with the help of in-house experts.

Besides, Staff Augmentation might have 2 bonuses: monthly rates and a tripwire system. You will know how to get benefits from them in the next article. Stay tuned!

l.sidorenko