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The post-COVID era of flexible work arrangements might become the norm in many industries because so many workers and employers have gotten used to remote work. You can leverage the benefits of a remote workforce to grow, cut costs, and exploit new opportunities at a lower cost than hiring new staff or even a long-term temp or two.

Knowledge sharing is another potential benefit in that your own IT staff can learn some new things from those outside programmers, testers, user interface/user experience (UI/UX) people, and project managers. Staff augmentation offers great flexibility in scaling up and cutting back on spending as market conditions or business opportunities dictate.

The New, Nimble and Remote Workforce

Many managers and executives in the IT world are already comfortable with the idea of using freelancers and more so with the idea of using remote development teams for coding and testing. In 2022, the technology world has become complicated. Standards, languages, development frameworks, customer expectations, regulations – they have all changed. Temporary staffing agencies, freelance websites, and development firms that do IT staff augmentation all offer an alternative to the expensive process of hiring full-time IT staff.

Given the value that many place on being able to work from home, and the productivity benefits and the financial savings, it often makes sense to try and create a small, nimble IT development team in-house. However, a staffing augmentation can supply additional talent or certain specialists on an as-needed basis. Neither temp nor temp-to-hire arrangements suits every business need or works for every business opportunity that comes along.

Advantages of Staff Augmentation

You can use the development company’s team part-time or for a fixed term. The staff augmentation company already has suitable people, so you also save the time and effort of recruiting freelancers. Finally, using staff augmentation as an HR strategy offers more flexibility. And there are a few other advantages:

• Cost efficient – the staff augmentation firm that provides programmers is also taking care of human resources, payment, hardware, fringe benefits, and software licensing. This means that for short-term projects, the staff augmentation model makes financial sense.
• Speed – Software developers can offer a wider range of talent without any need to recruit. This makes staff augmentation a much better strategy than using an IT staffing agency.
• Secure – Outsourcing development work involves exposing a company’s intellectual property to outsiders.
• Wider talent pool – A staff augmentation firm, especially if they are also a development shop, will have ready access to a wider talent pool than your average staffing firm or recruiter.
• Flexibility – Staff augmentation firms make it easier for a company to ramp-up operations or scale back as needed to meet various business challenges.
• Exposure to new perspectives – Outside developers and designers bring innovative ideas and experience with different ways to solve various development challenges.

Flexibility is a crucially important advantage to augmenting your workforce with remote workers. A company can bring on people it needs to compete for certain projects or to take on larger projects that the permanent, full-time staff could handle. In lean times, or when the time comes to shift your business strategy, you can simply not renew a staff augmentation contract. You can also modify it to suit your evolving needs.

It may not be clear how a development firm that hires out their staff would deliver those advantages in a better way than temp agencies or freelancers. A software development example makes it easier to see why IT staff augmentation often delivers better results.

Temporary staffing fills short-term needs, which is something a staffing augmentation arrangement can do, but temping is better for longer-term projects. Staff augmentation brings on temporary IT staff to fill gaps in the team’s skills even when they only need to be on a project part time or for a week.

Hiring freelance developers, designers, or content writers may also be an option, but the freelance option can be time-consuming. Someone must run ads, vet applicants, and supervise their work. Temporary agencies take on some of the human resources work but their focus is normally on short-term staffing. Or, in some cases, they will fill temp-to-hire roles.

Gearing up to Create a Web-Based Application

Web-based apps are popular and likely to remain so because they provide customers with the convenience and access they want. Some business owners will outsource the entire development process, while other businesses might need specific skills. A company that sees an opportunity but needs additional programming or design talent might not be able to justify hiring new people. Working with a staffing agency to find a UI/UX person, a cloud services architect, and a .NET developer can become expensive. An IT developer that offers staff augmentation has access to developers and designers with the right skills for the exact amount of time the client needs those specific skills to build their new web app.

Adapt and Capitalize on the New Reality

In the IT world, there are many scenarios where staff augmentation makes sense. This model of using specific development talent only when needed has advantages over hiring temp agencies, growing your in-house technology staff, or having someone hire and vet freelancers. Many large development companies also have a deep bench of development talent familiar with a wide range of projects, languages, operating systems, and development frameworks. With this diversity of talent and experience, DevDigital can fill gaps in your software development team to get your project done. Contact us to set up a short conversation about your software development needs.