7 Tips for a Successful Staff Augmentation

Amadeus Consulting is a software development and consulting company, which means that we often help supplement other companies’ internal development staff through staff augmentation services.

For software development, staff augmentation helps provide a boost to a project that is running behind schedule, or to provide additional assistance during a spike in technical need, such as the initial startup phase of a company, or with other time-limited projects.

The challenge is that almost nobody plans on needing staff augmentation, and many companies do not know how to make the most of it. Having been a part of many staff augmentation projects and overseen many others, I’d like to share some tips that can help companies save money and better achieve the desired outcome. These tips also apply to pretty much any on-site software contractor or development consultant.

Don’t

Do not bring in a bunch of people all at once. Unfortunately many staff augmentation projects are driven by a sharp deadline which makes it very tempting to just contract a handful of experienced developers, but in most cases, a gradual increase saves money and turns out to be more efficient with little impact on the deadline. In urgent cases “gradual” may mean bringing in a new team member every few days, or it may mean every few weeks.

By bringing in a team lead first, they can get a good understanding of the project and then they can help find the best developers within their team and quickly get them up to speed on what needs to be done. It is important to remember that our teams are not only experienced developers, but they are also experienced working with each other. The team lead understands their team and can quickly relate everything to them in order to get things started up quickly.

This also helps avoid “on boarding” delays such as setting up development access to things like SharePoint, databases, websites, or whatever system they will be working on. Nobody wants to be rushed onto a project just to sit around for a few days while the basics are worked out. It wastes your money and it makes it harder to integrate the developer into the rest of the team.

Don’t

Do not have the developers work in isolation. Let them integrate into the existing development team and build rapport with the permanent employees at your company. This is very helpful for the end-of-project knowledge transfer and important in case any aspect of the project changes midstream.

There are a few cases where working in isolation is ok, but the developers need the ability to regularly provide updates as well as explain the project to you to ensure that you understand it once they leave.

Do!

Do make the project a team effort and create a team atmosphere. In any staff augmentation project there is always a little bit of friction and “cultural” differences between the two companies as each company has its different processes for doing certain things (everything from dress code, to logging time). Help the teams to function as a single unit to accomplish a defined goal.

In many cases, this transition can be eased by giving them the same orientation that you would give any new employee.

Do!

Consider workspace and general comfort. We understand that many of these projects are needed at the last minute, but do your best to plan and prepare a place for the developers to work. This is another benefit to gradually expanding the team, as you have a little bit more time to prepare. They do not expect individual offices, but a desk and working space is nice, or a conference room might do in a pinch.

Be as hospitable as you can. Having a good work space makes it much easier for us to do everything that needs to be done.

Do!

Have clear goals and expectations. It takes an extremely skilled project leader in order to double their development team overnight and have everyone up and running at full speed by the next day. In many cases a company finds itself behind schedule and needs a few more developers immediately. However, just adding three people to the team will not accomplish anything if you do not have clear goals and tasks for them to start on.

It is helpful to outline the project and divide it into smaller tasks and milestones. Then these can be assigned individually while retaining a global view of the project.

This is also a benefit to gradually increasing your staff. Rather than doubling your staff overnight, you can scale up to exactly what you need and keep everyone productive during the process. This saves your company money and makes the transition easier for both sides.

Do!

Do get the right people to work on the right tasks. When on an urgent deadline it can sometime be challenging to understand exactly what you need in order to complete a project. But identifying the skills and expected outcomes can help narrow the list and will help find the best developers for your particular need.

Utilize the specific skills of people on the team you’ve hired. In some cases companies are hesitant to let contract workers assist with more complex areas of their IT systems because they need to make sure that they fully understand them. However if you hire a contractor that is exceptionally skilled with that system, then it is to your benefit to seek their assistance. Just make sure you have some sort of a knowledge transfer at the end of the project.

Do!

As we have mentioned throughout the other items, do plan for a knowledge transfer at the end of the project. Make sure that you and your permanent staff understand everything that went into the project so that it can be properly maintained over time. This means knowing and understanding all of the details.

Some things are basic, like ensuring that you have the login information to any new systems. But other things are more complex, like knowing certain configurations on newly installed systems, or understanding that – for example – you only have a single web server and that if it fails your entire website goes down.

Always make sure to schedule a meeting or reverse-orientation to run through the project together. Even a short discussion of the details can save you a lot of time in the future.

Additional Thoughts

It is always okay to ask for help. As a technology consulting company, we are more than happy to meet with clients and work with them to find the best solution for their needs. This gives a fresh perspective on the problem and gives the client enough time and freedom to take a step back and take a fresh look.

From a business standpoint, working in staff augmentation is an interesting challenge because we inevitably work ourselves out of a job every single time. However in the long run it pays off because companies learn to respect us as well as our ability to solve challenging problems, and that either turns into future business opportunities or referrals from satisfied clients.