In a world where the demands of your clients are forever evolving, it’s a bold gamble to refuse to modify the list of services you’re willing to offer them. But at the same time, it’s difficult and expensive to hire the top talent to build a team you need to cater to these demands. Further, these demands are constantly changing, and changing teams accordingly is not a sound business idea. So what do you do to make the most of the opportunities presented by the present while also staying secure enough for the promising future? You innovate. You mix and match and explore new ways of approaching the problem. One of the most popular and staggeringly efficient ways that have emerged out of this innovation is staff augmentation. 

What Is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is an outsourcing strategy where companies hire specific talent for a limited period of time according to their needs. The key to this strategy is that companies have anchors in place in the form of existing teams. Now this doesn’t have to be a full-fledged, hustling, and bustling group of employees. The permanent teams can be tiny provided the leaders can handle movement and reassignment of roles. 

As per Entrepreneur, staff augmentation is now commonplace, with approximately $500 billion spent annually on global IT staffing services alone.

In this blog, we are going to unveil the top skills that will be at the frontier of the software development staff augmentation landscape in 2023, the strategy that empowers companies to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of tech. 

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

The tech-driven world is experiencing an accelerated evolution, more so since the pandemic as our external lives moved to our devices. The industry is revealing ingenious innovations every single day. In a climate like this, leaders are too required to become flexible in their methods to pace with the ever-present innovation and disruption in the industry. 

This shift has also swung the pendulum in favor of the most talented developers in the industry. They can deliver what the market demands and that’s why they want more from their employers. And this is not in terms of benefits, but this regards their constant growth and development. As a company, catering to all these needs can be a little challenging and that’s why more and more tech leaders are now making the switch to staff augmentation. 

Yes, you guessed it right, the most obvious advantage of staff augmentation is that it allows companies to expand their offerings in the tech industry. With the ease and flexibility of this strategy, companies can do this with minimum costs and hassle. 

Let’s further discuss the benefits of staff augmentation in detail below: 

• Access to Specialized Skills: It’s a good sign if you have a team of versatile developers who can adapt to changing demands of the market. But specialization offers a deeper knowledge of the frameworks and opens new possibilities in a different way. Working with highly skilled professionals with specialized knowledge in specific technologies, programming languages or domains can also enrich the skill base of your existing teams by being exposed to acquired skills or knowledge. This further enhances the learning culture of your organization.
  
• Faster Time-to-Market: Staff augmentation can accelerate project timelines for companies providing them with experienced professionals specifically in the area of the project who can contribute right off the bat. This skill of these professionals translates as reduced development cycles and faster turnover rates.
• Cost Efficiency: As mentioned above, staff augmentation can help you achieve your goals without burning a big hole in your pocket. How? First, you don’t need to shell out the usual expenses of benefits, training, and infrastructure. And second, you can hire them for the concerned project in particular for the time you need. Hire the most kickass developers now for the time period you need.
• Mitigation of Risks: Software development projects pose a number of risks such as delays, budget overruns, and technical setbacks. With staff augmentation, you have a team of armed arsenal on your side who have delivered similar projects in the past and therefore have the wherewithals of solving problems efficiently. You can further use this advantage to better your project planning, risk management, and problem-solving methods.
• Play On Your Strengths: When you hire an expert team of professionals to handle specific elements of your project, you create the space for your existing team to focus on what they do best instead of doing mediocre work on something that lies beyond their forte. They can now use this latitude to participate in high-priority tasks, innovation, and business growth while the augmented team deals with specific challenges deftly. 

As easy as it sounds, staff augmentation requires leaders to have a thorough understanding of the core competencies of their existing teams. Not only that, a stronger knowledge of voids in the skill levels will help them augment the strength of their staff in a more effective manner.

Once the managers/ leaders have enough context, they need to understand the top skills that are available in the market for their needs. To make this process easy for you, we have compiled a list of the top skills for staff augmentation in software development below:

• Full-Stack Development: Web development is becoming an increasingly prized skill today and full-stack developers who have expertise in both front-end and back-end development are highly sought after in the industry in 2023.
• Cloud Computing: Cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are changing how we store and use data and as this dependence increases, cloud computing skills like knowledge of infrastructure, deployment, and management are becoming valuable to leverage the benefits of cloud tech.
• DevOps: DevOps engineers can implement continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines easing the collaboration between development and operations teams and can supercharge your overall efficiency.
• Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence: This is no news anymore. More and more applications are integrating machine learning and AI recently and the ones who can run this technology bode good news and a full-blown innovation for your company as well. AI frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch are some of the industry favorites.
• Mobile App Development: The increasing dependence of human lives on cell phones is news of the past now because the dependence shows no signs of stopping and it’s becoming essential for companies to have the mobile tech know-how to thrive. Developers who have the skill of building mobile apps using frameworks like React Native or Flutter are in high demand.
• Cybersecurity: The influence of tech on our lives is increasing and so is the amount of terror the data breaches and cyber threats assume in our lives. Considering this scenario, cybersecurity is becoming recognised as a need and the demand for coders who can deploy secure coding practices, vulnerability testing and implementing secure systems is increasing.
• Agile Development Methods: Agile teams are becoming the buzzword for the right reasons and the people who possess the skill of working in a change-prone environment and can communicate and collaborate are proving to be a great resource to companies.
• Blockchain: Even if blockchain was introduced a few years ago, the concept remains esoteric knowledge for most. Blockchain is regarded as the tech of the future by many in the industry and that’s why it pays to have developers who understand blockchain concepts or decentralized applications(DApps) can fill critical roles.
• UX/UI Design: User experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are proving crucial to the success of software applications as consumers are spoilt for choice today. Developers with competent knowledge of UX/ UI can develop cutting-edge apps that are at once intuitive and visually appealing for consumers.
• Big Data and Data Analytics: The volume of data uploaded every single day online is increasing and this can mean possibilities in the creation of a more intuitive technology. The best in data can work with several technologies like Hadoop, Spark, or SQL databases and help you arrive at insights from your chunk of data and make further decisions accordingly. 

These are all specialized skills that take years of practice and learning. The most senior developers holding expert knowledge of these elements of technology have experience on several projects involving a seasoned application of their skills. This could mean the enhancement of the longstanding operational systems at your current organization.

Outsourcing to such an advanced network of professionals expands your areas of expertise as an organization. This also boosts the morale of your team enabling you to experiment with different team structures and constantly evolve to the demands of the changing market. 

Emerging Technologies and Frameworks

Software development as an industry since its conception has been ever-evolving bringing with it a constant transformation in the ways we function even. To be a part of this industry is to be a part of change. This change needs to be known first to be used to your advantage. As a leader/ manager, it’s crucial that you stay updated with emerging technologies and frameworks because they are strong indicators of market demand. You need to understand the strengths and gaps of your team so that you also remain cognizant of the skills you require to create products that lie beyond your current operations. 

The non-tech world coincides with tech more often than not these days through the ingenious tech that is driving a revolution at our very foundation. Artificial intelligence (AI) and Blockchain are now subjects of dinner conversations given the large impact they are having on how we deal with money and computers. AR and VR are not just novel technologies anymore, they are our ways of gaming and advertising.

Quantum computing and robots are changing the very way we treat patients now. As more and more of our lives become integrated with technology, we will only find new uses for them. By being ready to incorporate these skills in your organization, you are taking a headfirst approach to novelty and breakthroughs. With staff augmentation, you can have more control over this approach and the ensuing process of acquiring new skills.

Communication Is Crucial

Before you venture into staff augmentation you need to gauge the soft skills level of your current team. As a new team enters, it’s your company culture that will determine to what extent you make use of the possible opportunities with this refined set of skills. To approach this more strategically, set systems to maximize the efficiency of communication need to be in place and so will your problem-solving methods and collaboration modules. 

Conclusion

A whole new possibility now stands at your door with staff augmentation without the usual costs associated with hiring the creme de la creme of developers in the tech industry. You can now implement a more specialized team that can see your vision through and create more ingenious products that represent the spirit of 2023 and the future. With a strong company culture and a strong understanding of what skills you require, you can make this strategy work better for you.