Staff augmentation vs outsourcing: what’s the best fit for you?

You want to find qualified tech talent overseas but don’t know where and how to start. You’ve heard organisations having great experiences outsourcing engineers… and others getting not-so-good results.

Then there’s staff augmentation, another popular model for hiring developers many businesses use to expand their teams. “Maybe this could work for us,” you may have thought while exploring solutions for finding professionals you can’t get at home.

But do you (really) know what these business processes are and how they can benefit you? Can you identify the key differences between them?

In this article, we compare staff augmentation vs outsourcing, analyse their pros and cons, and teach you how to make the right choice. We also reveal a unique and proven IT staff augmentation model that has helped multiple companies extend development teams on demand.

Let’s start!

What’s the difference between staff augmentation and IT outsourcing?

To better understand the difference between staff augmentation and outsourcing, let’s start by defining both terms.

Staff augmentation is a model organisations use to hire temporary help to meet sudden demand. For example, a tech company hires additional developers to complete a critical project on time.

Outsourcing means delegating a function or a process to a third party, usually located in a foreign country. For example, a US-based business outsources its IT support services to a tech team in Pakistan.

While these two models look quite similar — they’re often mixed up and used interchangeably — they hold a major difference regarding the level of control and accountability the contracting firm retains.

With staff augmentation, the employer controls and manages the project, with the temporary staff working as part of their existing team. In contrast, with outsourcing, the vendor generally oversees and delivers the project using their own processes and methods.

Staff augmentation pros and cons

Before making a decision between staff augmentation and outsourcing, you may want to explore the advantages and disadvantages of both models.

These are the main pros and cons of staff augmentation:

Pros

• Enjoying flexibility: Staff augmentation allows you to add more engineers to your team whenever you need it with the utmost flexibility. That’s a plus if all you require is one-off support for a particular project.
• Reducing costs: You’ll undoubtedly save money by augmenting your team with external professionals, especially if your organisation is based in a Western country. For instance, the median annual salary for a US software engineer is $179,000, compared to $31,000 in India. Besides compensation, you’ll reduce costs because you won’t need to spend on infrastructure, training or onboarding. With staff augmentation, you just hire experts to complete a task.
• Accessing specialised talent: If you can’t find the talent you need for a short-term assignment, staff augmentation sounds about right for your company. With this model, you can hire engineers specialised in the programming languages and industries you need.

Cons

• Struggling to grow in the long term: This model isn’t for you if you want to build a dedicated tech team that grows at the same pace as your business. For that purpose, offshoring is a better solution. In comparing staff augmentation vs offshore development, the latter wins regarding long-term growth. Remember that with staff augmentation you’re hiring short-term external help, not engineers who are 100% committed to your organisation.
• Lacking control: Although the engineers you hire temporarily work as part of your team, their time may be divided among other commitments. You might not consistently work with the same individual, and you may need to spend time reeducating new team members.
• Getting inconsistent quality: You know better than most that a development team relies on consistent standards and practices. What if your augmented engineers don’t adhere to these standards? What if their work doesn’t align with your team’s established processes? As you work with different employees every time, you have to train them in your ways of working, and they might not fully understand your product. This can lead to potential misalignment and inconsistency in the quality of work delivered.

Considering Outsourcing? Learn the Pros and Cons Before You Decide!

Here: https://thescalers.com/staff-augmentation-vs-outsourcing/