subject: Some Benefits Of It Staff Augmentation [print this page] Staff augmentation in simple terms can be defined as contract workers brought in by an organization to supplement the efforts of their internal staff in order to contain the costs and handle overflow work. The main objective of staff augmentation is to fulfill the need of specialized skills required to perform a project usually of a short-term duration in nature. In non-professional terms, Staff Augmentation implies contractors function as a member of the concerned department of an organization especially those who are engaged in IT businesses who take direction from IT managers. In addition, these contractors receive their paychecks from a different company and their assignments can be terminated at short notice without a cause or merit.
The need for staff augmentation arises because developing in-house capabilities to complete the projects may prove to be costly and risky venture particularly when the IT needs of an organization are constantly changing. Moreover, very few companies in the IT sector have static IT needs. Therefore, companies look for outside help in completing their Information Technology projects and staff augmentation is considered as an applicable delivery model for these companies. The IT staff augmentation allows a company to add staff as needed and at the same time, the concerned company may easily ramp up and down to meet changing demand without shouldering the costs and liabilities of a full time employee.
The advantages or benefits of staff augmentation for an IT company include:
---Existing resources can be leveraged: Staff augmentation helps in adding new skill sets to the team by taking advantage of both external and internal resources for the completion of their IT projects.
---Reduction on cost of acquiring skills: Staff augmentation is a way to avoid cost of investing in internal skills and development.
---Reduction in employer burdens: Costs and liabilities arising out of hiring regular or full time employees are avoided by going in for staff augmentation.
--- Ease of adoption: Adopting a staff augmentation is an easier model than any other staffing models as it is only a small shift from what companies are already doing when hiring full time candidates as their employees.
---Filling the expertise gap: Any gap arising in a project team due to lack of expertise can be easily filled up by staff augmentation with specialized contract staff.
These are some of the benefits of IT staff augmentation.
