We help companies maximize the potential of their in-house software development teams for improved agility and enhanced computing capability. A staff augmentation firm is far more than a simple outsourcer. We don't stop at finding a candidate. Our goal is to match that candidate to your in-house team and its skill requirements to enable you to realize greater opportunities and set more ambitious goals for the future.
What does this entail? Examples include talented software teams that require project management. Our firm will find a suitable project manager for the role, one who's equipped with relevant skills and can embed themselves into your development process. Or you may face new challenges in terms of the type or level of software you're developing, as is often seen in companies scaling from small to enterprise-level projects. IT staff augmentation helps you find part-time or full-time employees to fill skill gaps and scale teams to ensure they contain the diverse mixture of skills required to confront complex projects.
What Does a Staff Augmentation Company Do?
In a nutshell, we help businesses fill specific skill gaps in their IT and software development teams by finding highly skilled professionals.
You work with us to find outside personnel who deliver specialized skills to your tech team. These personnel are typically temporary workers, such as software engineers, who enable your team to meet challenges it is not currently equipped to handle. Full-time personnel are also available. Staff augmentation companies are essentially your route to building upon existing teams to enhance project progress.
Tech staff augmentation enables the following:
Greater Team Capacity
Achieve a temporary increase in your in-house labor force to confront new challenges that your existing team members alone cannot confront. Augmentation empowers you to handle seasonal demand, unexpected spikes in consumer demand, and the switch to developing enterprise software.
Access to Specialized Skills
We provide access to out-of-house skills that are not currently present among your IT workforce. Your augmented team is thus capable of completing different types of work, such as enhanced technology setup and development of complex software development projects.
Bridging the Gap to Hire
Not all companies use software staff augmentation to temporarily boost their teams for specific projects. The staff augmentation model also serves as a bridge for companies aiming to permanently expand their teams. You receive staff members to temporarily fill the roles for which you're conducting a full-time in-house hiring process.
Access to Flexible Labor
Strategic flexibility is at the forefront of the AGILE movement. With our software development staff augmentation, you gain a competitive advantage by receiving access to a flexible and highly skilled labor market. Your existing team achieves enhanced speed to market.
The Lightci IT Staff Augmentation Process - Step-by-Step
The IT Staff Augmentation Models
There are multiple models for tech and software staff augmentation. Understanding these models is key to determining the differences between one form of staff augmentation vs. another. By developing that understanding, we ensure you have access to the top talent for your project team and experience the full range of staff augmentation benefits.
Model 1 - Skill-Based Augmentation
Skill-based augmentation is perhaps the most common model. Your company works alongside a staff augmentation partner to locate external talent that fills a skills gap within your in-house team.
Project requirements are key in this model. Hiring is typically decided by the technical expertise the team requires, with a focus on specialized tasks that you're unlikely to face over the long term. This doesn't mean long-term hiring isn't possible in the skill-based augmentation model. We often find that tech teams extend a staff augmentation contract from short-term to long-term through this model, especially if they anticipate receiving more of the work for which they augmented in the first place.
Model 2 - Project-Based Augmentation
There are clear parallels between project-based and skill-based augmentation. Both models provide staffing solutions for teams that have notable skill gaps. The difference is that project-based augmentation enables you to build a full-blown technical team regardless of whether you already have one in-house.
This model is best used by companies that take on projects that fall outside of their core competencies. We provide a fully outsourced team capable of self-management and possessing the skills to ensure project success. Thus, the burden of project management is taken away from other team members, with the external team being capable of operating independently as long as it receives full instruction.
Model 3 - Commodity Augmentation
Not all staff augmentation models require the locating of skilled resources to add to an internal team. In the commodity augmentation model, highly specialized talent takes a backseat to ensuring your team meets unspecialized labor needs.
The hiring of factory and retail workers are good examples in other industries. In the tech sector, you may require commodity augmentation for lesser-skilled roles, such as data entry or in-house administration. You may also use commodity augmentation if your tech company has a retail aspect.
How It's Done
The Lightci IT staff augmentation service follows a proven step-by-step model designed to ensure you locate the in-house or remote team members you require to achieve rapid growth.
01. Identify Business Needs
The first step of the IT staff augmentation process often takes place in-house without the aid of an external firm. Your company outlines and identifies specific business needs that may be better achieved with the help of augmentation. Examples include projects for which you don't have the necessary resources or teams that are underperforming due to the existence of a skills gap.
The objective is outlined along with potential solutions that enable the achievement of that objective. At this point, you may begin your search for an outsourcing company. Our advice at this stage is to look for an augmentation firm that has a proven track record and is willing to work alongside you to find skilled specialists who are as much a good fit for your team as they are for the project you wish to complete.
02. Choose a Technology Staff Augmentation Model
Upon determining your business objectives and electing an augmentation firm, you move on to selecting the appropriate model. This is a collaborative step in which we'll work alongside team management to discover specific requirements on the skill and labor levels. The following are key considerations when choosing an IT staff augmentation model:
- A definition of your project's goals, core requirements, and the business objectives you aim to achieve via the augmentation process.
- Capability assessments to determine the condition of your current team and the areas where skill gaps may cause challenges in providing deliverables to your clients.
- The scope and duration of the project, which impact whether you require long-term or short-term augmentation in addition to helping determine if a dedicated team or individuals with specialized skills are best suited to your needs.
- A pros and cons analysis of each outsourcing model that helps us to weigh your business needs against what each augmentation model provides.
03. Recruitment
Once you have chosen an IT staff augmentation company and an appropriate model for your business needs, the recruitment process begins. We use your requirements to source appropriate candidates who match both your skill requirements and align with your team's culture.
Again, this is a collaborative process. We conduct preliminary interviews and candidate assessments on your behalf to discover viable candidates. However, we encourage you to conduct interviews of your own and to become an active part of the selection process to streamline this step.
04. Staff Onboarding
It's at this point that the augmentation process begins to mirror your typical hiring process. Successful candidates are onboarded to your team and go through a learning process related to your company's culture and the projects on which they'll be working.
Integration is the goal in the staff onboarding step. Though it's easy to see IT staff augmentation as a quick way to boost your team's skills and labor capabilities, the most effective augmentation occurs when your new team members are familiar with your business and its projects. It's about equipping new people with the tools they need to ensure your success. We collaborate with you to refine your existing onboarding processes for all active staff augmentation projects.
05. Augmented Team Management
Any project manager will tell you that effective team management is the key to achieving business objectives. This management can be challenging if your augmented team operates out-of-house, as is often the case with remote workers.
We help your business establish clear communication channels with your new team members to ensure instructions are delivered promptly and your new team members are capable of collaborating with your existing team.
We also establish processes through which you receive vital information, such as:
- Regular check-ins with your augmented team, such as weekly staff meetings.
- Completion of progress reports which enable you to track projects from beginning to completion.
- Creation of feedback loops through which your new team members can raise and address challenges they face.
Often, this step involves the integration of your in-house project management tools with your augmented team to ensure everybody is working from the same page.
06. Compliance and Legal Evaluations
As the above steps are in process, a good staff augmentation consulting firm will also examine the legal and regulatory implications of bringing your new team member on board.
This process is twofold.
As a vendor, we comply with all relevant laws and regulations in your country and the new staff member's country of origin. We ensure you're informed about labor and data protection laws relevant to your business. Furthermore, we consult with you regarding intellectual property rights to ensure your sensitive data is handled appropriately at every stage of the process.
On the hiring side, we establish contracts between your company and any candidates found through the augmentation process. These contracts account for the previously mentioned laws and regulator concerns. They also outline your terms of engagement with the new team member and enable you to form confidentiality agreements and establish liability clauses as needed. Think of this as the due diligence aspect of the IT staff augmentation process.
07. Ongoing Assessment and Evaluation
IT staff augmentation is not a "one-and-done" process. As with any hiring process, evaluation of the new team member is integral to long-term success. We conduct ongoing assessments and evaluations on your behalf. These assessments, conducted alongside your team, enable us to evaluate the impact augmentation has had on your business objectives and plan for any of your future projects.
Evaluations vary depending on your needs. However, they usually involve the following:
- Performance assessments to confirm the new staff members have adapted to their roles and, if not, what procedures we can implement to ensure they become more effective members of your team.
- Assessments of work quality to ensure the work you're receiving meets the standards you and your clients expect.
- Collaborative evaluations to determine how well the new staff members align with your company's core business activities and values.
As this final step is a collaborative process, we will ask you to gather feedback relating to the augmented staff from your internal team. This feedback forms the foundation for improvement plans related to both the augmented staff members and any future augmentation in which your business participates. For many of our clients, the ongoing assessment process also serves to inform future augmentation decisions.
When Might You Need In-House IT Team Augmentation Services?
You now understand how our IT staff augmentation service works and the process we follow to ensure you receive the appropriate staff. A key question remains:
How do you know if you need IT staff augmentation?
The specific criteria vary. However, your business is likely a good candidate for augmentation if any of the following apply.
Strengthen Your In-House Development Team
Even the strongest in-house team can be strengthened to enhance its capabilities. While we often see strengthening through the lens of equipping the team with new skills, companies also use augmentation to enhance a team's current strengths even when they don't require specialized skills to complete projects.
Complementing the existing team takes priority over filling skill gaps in these situations. For instance, augmentation can provide additional programmers to an already strong software development team to make the team well-rounded and capable of delivering projects faster. You may choose this type of option if your company experiences a spike in demand for services your team is already capable of rendering but is short-staffed or requires having augmented staff on hand to provide relief for vacation and sick days.
Fill Your Tech Talent Skill Gaps
Imagine that your team has successfully delivered several mobile apps to one of your clients. That client is impressed enough to continue sending business in your direction. However, their projects are becoming more complex and your current team is unable to fully service the client's needs as the apps they wish to develop require skills your in-house team doesn't possess.
IT staff augmentation is ideal for such situations. Your augmented staff delivers skills to your team that enable project completion in cases where your in-house team finds itself dealing with a skills gap. In the above app example, augmentation may help if the client had previously focused on iOS apps but now wishes to develop apps for Android as well.
The goal is to deliver specialized skills to your team without the commitment of hiring somebody full-time. Augment for as long as you need to fill the skill gap before returning to the team size that worked for your company before it faced new requirements.
Staff augmentation is also helpful for teams operating in locations where there are few skilled professionals capable of handling the work the team does. Deep knowledge becomes more widely accessible as you expand your hiring pool from local to global through IT staff augmentation.
Expand Your Existing Team Fast
Even the most capable teams struggle when a business scales. Increased demand for the team's skills creates a massive burden compounded by what is often a multi-month search for a single new member to help manage the increased workload. Companies often find themselves having to compromise through the refusal of work that could allow them to scale faster as they balance heightened labor requirements and business growth.
Tech staff augmentation is an ideal solution in these scenarios. You work with us to implement tested and proven hiring practices focused on locations that offer healthy supplies of the type of talent you require to quickly grow your team. Rapid expansion follows, with your team growing in capability to enable scaling at a much faster rate.
An example scenario is a company attempting to switch from creating software solutions for small and medium-sized businesses to creating solutions at the enterprise level. Enterprise software is more complex and comes with greater demands levied by your client. Staff augmentation allows you to handle this complexity by providing more software development labor far quicker than you can find that labor locally.
Meet Tight Software Development Deadlines
Sometimes, your team is simply straddled with a project that carries a tighter deadline than is typical. This can happen when a client comes to you with an emergency project or cases where scope creep has resulted in delays that leave you behind schedule.
In these cases, IT staff augmentation can serve as a temporary stopgap measure allowing you to complete a project on time and within budget. Your augmented staff relieves the labor load on your embattled team. Beyond enhanced capability delivered via the augmented staff's specialized skills, you gain the ability to assign more work to be conducted simultaneously, speeding up your development process as needed.
Cost Savings Compared to Hiring Full-Time Employees
Hiring in-house software developers is an expensive process. The average company spends upward of $13,000 on the hiring process alone, assuming it doesn't use a recruiting agency. Add a local agency into the mix and hiring costs alone can balloon to over $40,000. All of this is before you consider the ongoing cost of maintaining an in-house software developer. These costs can range from $20 to over $70 per hour depending on the developer's experience level.
Such costs are difficult to absorb, especially for a company that is attempting to scale at the same time as it's hiring. IT staff augmentation offers a happy middle-ground. You still work with a recruiting agency of sorts. However, that agency has access to a far wider talent pool. Thanks to that access, you're able to find short- and long-term talent quickly, which reduces costs with rates far lower than you may have to pay for local talent.
Speed is of the essence when it comes to cost savings. We help you find talented software engineers in 10 days or less so you can focus on the important business of managing your projects.
Other Models Simply Haven't Worked For You
The software staff augmentation model is far from the only development model that exists. There are many others, including the waterfall, spiral, and AGILE models. Each comes with defined benefits, though they often fall due to the aforementioned issues of skill gaps or labor shortages.
Augmentation becomes an option for many of our clients when they discover that other software development models don't work well for them. We provide the right people to make your models workable or to help you complete the shift to a new working model that's more suited to your business objectives.
Get Started with Our IT Staff Augmentation Services Today
You now understand how an IT staff augmentation service works. That leaves one question remaining:
Why Lightci?
A Provable Track Record
Our augmentation service has helped many of the major players in the tech industry expand their offerings. We've provided staff that power the teams behind Apple Cash, Walmart's digital lab, and Coinbase's credit rewards program. In all cases, we provided software engineers within 10 days, enabling these major brands to accelerate their development processes to bring their offerings to consumers.
Multiple Capabilities Available
We offer access to a wide array of capabilities as your new outsourcing vendor. These capabilities include, but aren't limited to, the following:
- Software development
- Artificial intelligence
- Cybersecurity
- Design
- Data
- Testing
- Infrastructure
- Products
Many sub-capabilities exist within these core capabilities. We help you to identify the types of augmented staff members you need based on the specific talents your business requires.
Demonstration Available
We provide all of our clients with a demonstration of our services before they make a commitment. Perhaps you would like to see this demonstration in action? Book yours today and connect with the Lightci team. We only require basic contact information and an explanation of how you believe we can help you expand your software development team.
