Time to rethink staff augmentation?
Time to rethink staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation is the strategic arm of outsourcing, when used properly can tremendously help with ROI of any small or large scale projects. Over the years, it transformed from being a strategic to mere tactical tool mirroring outsourced hiring. Unfortunately today’s staff augmentation providers are more like headhunters who often do not consider factors beyond roles and skills (i.e. the business or project objectives).
We believe working as a strategic partner, understanding the unique characteristics of your business provides significant benefits as you are executing projects, big or small. We envision the future of the workforce, especially in the context of staff augmentation, as a space where resource acquisition will guide business growth. Our renewed approach is inspired by the work of Ramnath Chellapa of Emory University on cloud computing.
In the case of enterprise software development, the right team is one of the most important ingredient for success. It can boost productivity and efficiency, deliver product code in record time, transform the user experience, and improve ROI.
We’ll explain why below, highlighting the urgent need for customized team building in product development. We’ll also share what you should consider when building a team in the modern development cycle.
Not Your Standard Staff Augmentation Provider?
In recent years, a major development in hiring (using staff augmentation, in-house or outside recruiter), especially in the tech sphere, has been a one-size-fits-all approach.
All similarly qualified developers have become interchangeable and the providers do not give businesses any control over the developer they work with. Instead, many providers simply offer a turnkey, un-tailored approach – a simple developer plug-and-play without reviewing the project’s needs.
This approach gives rise to notable issues for business in the long run. Companies end up handing over control to developers they are unfamiliar with and who may not be suitably skilled for projects, while aptly qualified from pure technical perspective. An ideal approach includes analyzing your needs and business goals first in order to find a suitable developer keeping in mind your software production process.
Another issue, both for the business and developers, is that this plug-and-play system promotes “work for the sake of work”. Developers aren’t paired with businesses based on special skills or experience. Any developer can take on a project. This becomes mere routine work and developers do not refine or specialize their skills.
As a result, they miss out on the salary and career benefits of having niche expertise. Businesses also miss out on the impact that having an expert in their niche could offer their projects.
A New Solution: Product-Led Teaming (PLT)
At Total Performance Consulting, we believe that the scaling of a team should be customized, well-planned, and based on detailed analysis of your product lifecycle.
How PLT works:
- Prioritize industry experience: By doing so, your team has higher productivity and efficiency.
- Building teams not filling roles: Filling roles one by one is time consuming and it leads to friction in continuous development, especially during early stages of product evolution.
- Align business objectives: Working closely with product leaders, talent acquisition and other internal stakeholders builds thorough understanding of desired business objectives, processes, issues, highlights, and low points. Not to mention, significant impact on the quality of work and time to production.
Why Does This Solution Work?
This system is proven to work, evidenced by the quality of service we offer at TPC. It works because it:
- Reduces the cost of staff augmentation. Hiring developers one by one is costly.
- Removes the burden on the developer to learn or know the business’ requirements. Instead, as a provider, you select a developer who already has an understanding or fits a project. That way, they can focus entirely on engineering or computing with the right foundation backing them.
- Brings developers with industry experience to the client. Usually, developers with the right experience are difficult to find and hire, except for very niche specialities.
Total Performance Consulting: Pioneering Product-led Teaming
When a business seeks staff to join or assist on a project, they have specific needs for that individual. The project itself may also have particular requirements. These “eligibility requirements” limit the pool of suitable developers.
Beyond the business’ requirements, there are also specific developer characteristics that matter. These include the field of expertise, experience, knowledge, skillset, etc. These characteristics further constrain developer options in the search for ideal candidates.
All these details are what make developers unequal. There are those who would be able to provide top productivity and efficiency for a project. And then, there are those who would simply be filling a role, completing uninspired routine work.
We at TPC, always aim to connect businesses with developers that are head and shoulders above the rest. We analyze business needs and processes, identify gaps in your current team, and build you the best team in record time.
We don’t just pick any random developer and slot them into a position. Often, we go beyond our client’s expectations, pointing out missing elements in their team that they were not aware of and providing the right developers to fill these gaps.
At TPC, We:
- Seek to understand your application’s user experience. We do this by analyzing your user journey and creating an optimal user experience.
- Encourage and support your business’ scalability.
- Provide a roadmap of evolution of skills and resources needed for your desired business objectives.
- Support you through the software development process.
- Provide complex automation for software quality assurance.
- Conduct intricate manual tests to maintain product quality and user experience.
- Offer an expert team to assist you in performance engineering, resource acquisition, software development, etc.
Conclusion
Staff augmentation can increase your organization’s capacity, help you meet demand, and provide you with necessary, specialized skill sets. However, these benefits are only possible when staff augmentation is done properly. And the proper way is through what we call Product-Led Teaming. That way, you don’t just get any developer on your team, you get the best possible team for your business needs!
To get your tech team functioning exactly the way you want it to, contact us today.
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