There is a crucial question that is provoked when it comes to the search for a staff augmentation firm: What is it you need?
In many ways, how you choose a staff aug provider is similar to when it comes to choosing any service provider. The selection process includes researching, following up on potential providers’ qualifications, and comparing their services.
What exactly is staff augmentation?
When an organization needs to expand its team for a particular amount of time, they can hire highly qualified workers in their fields in what is known as staff augmentation. It is particularly common for when organizations are stretched in a project or are lacking specific skills for a project.
Projects come in many sizes, forms, and scopes. In terms of technology, the landscape is capable of changing rapidly. Staff augmentation firms provide quality solutions that keep organizations ahead of any technological issues and changes. This is carried out by full-time software developers who can write code in their sleep.
When deciding whether staff augmentation is the right staff model for your organization, there are a handful of additional questions that will help guide your decision. These include:
- Is there a need for temporary or permanent workers for the project?
- Is there a need to create a temporary project-specific development team?
- Will the development resources of a project be diverted from other projects?
- Is there already a specialized software development team currently in your organization that could work with a nearshore team?
The answers to these questions are going to move you closer to a decision as it crystallizes the type of workforce that you need. After this stage is clarified, it’s going to be much easier to detect firms that don’t check all the necessary boxes. 
Firstly, look closely at the portfolio of a staff aug firm and check its previous work. You’re going to want to work with a firm with a strong track record of working with customers who match or are similar to yours.
This includes scanning LinkedIn articles, reviews on websites like Glassdoor, and testimonials in order to learn about the firm’s history and reputation.
The language of staff augmentation
Staff augmentation is, above all, adding dedicated workers to your team. And yes, they’re going to be coding in the language that you need, but you’re going to want augmented staff that also speak English (so long as the language of your organization is English).
Language barriers should be a major consideration when it comes to staff augmentation. For this reason, staff aug firms in Latin America are key for US organizations while Eastern Europe is key for Western Europe.
You don’t want things getting lost in translation so hiring workers who speak your language will eliminate most of the potential issues.
Also important to consider when selecting IT staffing requirements is the style of communication. Software developers are going to have to transform your ideas into reality, with communication between the two being vital.
In order to accomplish that, devs must be able to understand the needs of the project. So, when assessing nearshore developers, consider questions such as:
- What does a successful communication process look like so that your organization’s expectations are met?
- Can they send frequent updates on a regular basis?
- Are you going to be given reports on the work that is completed?
These lines of questioning are going to help you define, first of all, whether staff augmentation is the right staffing model for your organization and secondly, what type of staff augmentation firm will best fit your needs.
