IT Staff Augmentation: Roles & Responsibilities of Vendor and Customer

So you may be wondering about IT staff augmentation role & the responsibilities of this hiring model. You may wonder what the staff augmentation company will take on and what aspects you as the customer will have to do yourself. Keep reading to find out.

Table Of Contents

IT staff augmentation definition
What roles belong to the IT staff augmentation services vendor?
What costs are covered by the IT staff augmentation company
What responsibilities belong to the staff augmentation partner
What responsibilities belong to the customer
What roles does the IT staff augmentation model play in business growth?
Summary of IT staff augmentation roles responsibilities

Let’s look at IT staff augmentation roles and responsibilities a little more closely. To give you an idea of who is taking on what roles, what responsibilities, costs, etc. First off why don’t we explain what IT staff augmentation actually is?

IT staff augmentation definition

IT staff augmentation is a form of outsourcing that specializes in providing personnel with the skills to fill existing gaps. Using an 👉 IT staff augmentation company 👈 can give you access to technologically advanced personnel. You can hire developers who specialize in niche technologies and/or popular tech stacks. The addition of needed skills enables project managers to manage software development projects more effectively. It also relieves your company of the burden to recruit, training, and retain IT staff.

What roles belong to the IT staff augmentation services vendor?

The role of the IT staff augmentation vendor is to provide skilled personnel to fill gaps in the customer’s IT staff. The vendor works closely with the customer to:

review current and future needs,
develop a plan of action,
and provide the most appropriate software developers to meet these needs.

The staff augmentation vendor also provides training and professional development services. This is to ensure that developers are up-to-date with current technologies, processes, and procedures.

Additionally, the vendor provides ongoing support and guidance. This to ensure that the augmented staff is meeting the customer’s expectations. Here, at Swyply, we do monthly check-ins with our customers to make sure that they are happy with our cooperation.

During this time you can provide us with feedback on developer performance. We on the other hand can offer any advice in terms of best practices to integrate augmented staff and in-house team members. Also, if any issues arise we are an email or phone call away to help you resolve them.

What costs are covered by the IT staff augmentation company

The 👉 costs associated with IT staff augmentation 👈 will vary depending on the service provider. Typically, you will pay the staff augmentation a daily rate for the developer you hire.

Meanwhile, the staff augmentation vendor will cover employee costs. Costs such as taxes, health insurance, sick leave, and vacation time. They will also cover training and professional development costs. Some other items that the vendor may cover are laptops for coders along with office furniture for the home office. They may even cover and offer employee perks. Some perks may be a gym membership or e-learning courses.

Fun fact if you hire a number of software engineers you may get a better deal from your staff augmentation vendor than if you only hire one.

It staff augmentation responsibilities & customer roles on post-it notes

What responsibilities belong to the staff augmentation partner

The IT staff augmentation partner is responsible for providing personnel with the right skills and expertise to meet customer needs. They must also ensure that personnel is properly trained. Moreover, they must make sure developer are familiar with current technologies. Along with processes, and procedures. Lastly, they should check in to see if cooperation with temporary workers is going in the right direction.

Fill the skill gap

The first task of a staff augmentation partner is to fill the skill gap that exists currently in your in-house teams. They need to find the 👉 right software engineer to fill the gap 👈 that exists in the client’s workforce.

A staff augmentation vendor can do this in a few ways. For example, here at Swyply, we have an in-house team of software developers along with partnering Software Houses. We can use both of these options to help our client fill their talent gap. Plus we expand our capabilities by being able to offer our customers as many developers are they need for their projects.

Moreover, we offer a 👉 14-day risk-free trial period 👈, which allows our customers to test out developers. And if they are unhappy after the 2 weeks they can either switch developers or terminate our cooperation. Not to mention they will not pay a cent for those two weeks if they are unhappy and the cooperation just didn’t work out.

Provide training or professional development courses

Another responsibility of the staff augmentation partner is to provide tech talent with ongoing training. This ongoing training can be in the form of professional development courses, workshops, conferences, etc. To help specialized engineers stay ahead of the game with their skills.

Plus, many developers value professional development opportunities. As many coders want to continue growing their careers. Moreover, they like having the option of choosing courses that align with their chosen career path. So it’s important to provide this for 👉 developers in order to retain them 👈 and keep them happy in your projects.

Checking in on progress and cooperation satisfaction

Another key role and responsibility of a staff augmentation company are checking in with the customer to make sure that cooperation is going in the right direction. There should be ongoing support and communication to ensure success on both sides.

Here at Swyply, we make it a priority to check in with our customers at least once every month. During this time we want to make sure that the software developers you hired from us are working out. Also, we enquire whether you have any additional requirements that are not being met. We will also ask you about the progress of your software development project. We want to be able to gauge whether you may need our coders longer than you originally planned. Or perhaps you will finish earlier. Or you might finish your project right on time.

Moreover, we take this one step further by also checking in with our software engineers. We want to make sure that they are happy with the project that have they been placed in. Feedback from both sides allows us to resolve any issues as they come up and be on top of it all.

Customer looking at display to see what they need to do with their software development team

What responsibilities belong to the customer

Now that we have covered the roles and responsibilities of staff augmentation providers. Let’s dive into the role of the customer who is using this type of service provider. Some responsibilities that fall onto the customer include:

identifying project needs and the skill gap
onboarding the new employees
Project management and developer management

Let’s dive into each of these responsibilities in a little bit more detail. So that you can gain a deeper understanding of what you need to take on when using staff augmentation services.

Identifying project needs & skill gap

All industries have skill gaps. It’s possible to identify the skill gap by conducting interviews, observing, and evaluating. If you are unsure how to quickly identify skills gaps, we have a quick and easy skill audit:

Skill audit steps:

List the roles in your organization (your human resource department may already have this type of list ready to go)
Assign the responsibilities carried out by each role
Create & survey your workforce to see what roles they think are missing
Compile and analyze the results.

When you know what skills you have, you can determine what are long-term or short-term gaps. Sometimes teams need quick and effective skill sets for specific software modernizations & transformation efforts. You will need all this information, to give to the vendor. This way the vendor can help you hire the best talent.

Moreover, the customer needs to report information about current and future IT needs. This includes specifying the scope of tasks assigned. And providing any additional information necessary to ensure success. The customer must also ensure that the vendor is aware of any changes or updates to project timelines. Along with personnel requirements, or other project-related needs.

Here at Swyply, we ask our customers to give us as much notice as possible when it comes to resource requirements. If you need more software engineers, let us know earlier so we can find them quickly for you.

The same is true for the alternate scenario. If you need to let developers go early we need at least a one-month notice period, so we can line up new projects for those developers. While we understand projects can be unpredictable, 👉 one of the common staff augmentation challenges 👈 is not communicating properly. The earlier you let us know that you need something, the quicker we can help you meet those business needs.

Onboarding new hires to your in-house development team

Another key responsibility that falls onto the customer is onboarding new team members to your dedicated team. You want to make sure that you provide temporary staff with a strong onboarding to ensure they feel welcome on your team. There are numerous ways to ensure that you provide a strong onboard remote development team or remote developer such as:

Introduce your augmented team to your in-house staff. Make sure to explain who is responsible for what or who to report to.
Include temporary developers in all meetings regarding the project but also those more integration based.
Provide your project-basis team with a buddy to guide them along and answer any questions.
Organise team building workshops and include even temporary workers to make them feel part of the team.

When a developer feels like part of the team, they are more likely to stay in your project. They will work more efficiently and there will be fewer communication issues as well. When everyone feels comfortable with each other, they are more likely to reach out if there is something that needs to be discussed.

Not onboarding someone can lead to productivity issues, developer attrition and so much more. That is why you need to onboard every new member, even if they are temporary.

Startup business meeting about project management for augmented staff

Project & developer management

Something that goes hand and hand with onboarding is project management. You need to have a project manager that can run your software development team. The vendor will not manage your project or your IT team for you. This is the responsibility of the client to make sure they run the project internally with the help of temporary staff.

Moreover, this is not project outsourcing where the project is run externally, and you do not have to worry about anything. With the staff augmentation model, you run the project internally and a big part of that is project management.

In fact, adding augmented developers will make 👉 project management a lot easier 👈. This is because your project managers can spread work out more evenly. Moreover, your project manager has the necessary skills to complete the project properly. Also, the use of team augmentation can help meet budget demands, as opposed to overspending. Lastly, depending on the form of the staff augmentation model you choose. You may have developers that work on your project around the clock. If you hire offshore developers, you can be sleeping while our developers are working.

Something important to mention is the project management style, personally, we try to avoid micromanagement. Micromanagement creates toxicity in the workplace and squashes creativity. So it’s important to figure out what management style would work best for your augmented team and existing resources.

What roles does the IT staff augmentation model play in business growth?

IT staff augmentation can play an important role in business growth, largely in part because it is such a flexible hiring model. It provides business owners with endless possibilities to be adaptive even in 👉 hard financial times 👈.

Scale your business growth

IT staff augmentation is a great way to scale your business quickly and efficiently. It allows you to expand or collapse teams on demand. This model gives you the flexibility to hire temporary software developers when needed. This provides businesses with the ability to quickly find coders with the right skill set and knowledge for their projects.

By leveraging IT staff augmentation, businesses can increase efficiency by having access to a larger pool of experienced coders. These programmers can work on specific tasks or projects as needed. This allows them to push projects forward because they finally have access to specialized skill sets that they may not have in-house.

Modern female writing in notepad making a to-do list

Provide extra working hands to increase productivity

IT staff augmentation is a great way to increase productivity and get more working hands-onboard. It allows businesses to hire temporary software developers who can help with the development process. This can reduce the time it takes to develop a product or service, as well as improve the overall quality of the product.

Furthermore, it allows companies to access specialized skills that they may not have in-house. With IT staff augmentation, businesses can gain more customers and increase their revenue. This makes it an attractive option for many businesses looking to stay competitive in today’s market.

Reduce overhead costs

IT staff augmentation can help organizations reduce their overhead costs, as they don’t need to invest in additional infrastructure or equipment. Plus they are only paying developers while they are working. Once their work is done, they no longer pay for their services.

As we mentioned up above, IT staff augmentation vendors will typically cover costs such as health insurance, taxes, sick leave, etc. Here at Swyply, we even cover the costs of laptops and cofinance office furniture.

Also, by hiring specialists using staff augmentation, you as the customer are responsible for training or ongoing professional development. The vendor usually covers that, thus further reducing your overhead costs.

Help companies keep up with the ever-changing tech market

Furthermore, IT staff augmentation can help organizations make use of advanced technologies and process more quickly and effectively. You can access top-notch talent on demand who specialize in the newest technologies. Thus keeping your business future-proof and ahead of the curve.

Many staff augmentation services offer to rent out developers with experience in technologies such as Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, etc. These 👉 tech stacks 👈 are gaining popularity and it’s important for tech firms to remain competitive and keep up with these trends.

Moreover, sometimes adding that additional coder using staff augmentation services can convince a client to work with you as opposed to your competitor. Here at Swyply, many of our developers can also take on the role of a consultant. They can discuss with you or your client various technical solutions. These augmented developers can bring in a fresh perspective that can help you swing your project in a better direction.

Summary of IT staff augmentation roles responsibilities

IT staff augmentation is a form of outsourcing where a vendor provides specialized personnel with the skills and expertise to fill gaps in an organization’s IT staff. For example, you can add augmented staff and reduce them once the project has been completed.

But just like with every hiring model, there are certain things the vendor will take on. And certain tasks that will belong strictly to the customers. Let’s run through these really quickly below.

The roles & responsibilities of the staff augmentation vendor include:

ensuring appropriate software developers on demand
providing personnel, training, and professional development services,
checking in on progress and level of cooperation satisfaction

The customer is responsible for:

identify and provide information about the skill gaps you need to fill
onboarding new augmented staff
Project management of the software development team

What about business growth?

IT staff augmentation can play an important role in business growth by:

allowing business to quickly scale their software development services
increase the productivity of their existing staff by adding a remote team
reduce overhead costs
stay competitive by accessing and using the newest technologies in the IT industry

Other things worth mentioning about the IT staff augmentation model

Staff augmentation can help your human resource management team reduce the risk of hiring the wrong person for the job. Swyply developers are all pre-vetted and we can vouch for their skills and experience. Plus we have a 👉 14-day risk-free guarantee 👈 that enables you to switch developers or end our cooperation if you are unhappy.

Additionally, IT staff augmentation roles & responsibilities include improving the quality of IT services, by providing programmers who have experience in the newest & most innovative technology. Plus they are all experienced so they can jump in and get to work on your project.

Do you want to learn more about IT staff augmentation roles & responsibilities? 👉 Drop us a line 👈 and let’s have a free no-obligation chat.