How Staff Augmentation Drives Product Development Forward
May 11, 2020
Most entrepreneurs would agree that they want to put their digital products on the market as soon as possible. Is it too much to hope for? Not if you use the best scalable solutions during product development. Staff augmentation service is one of them.
No matter if you choose the agile or the waterfall method, each phase of product development comes with challenges… and surprises. Even if you’re backed up by solid research, proof of concept, and market analysis, life may come at you fast – just like it did recently at everyone due to the global pandemic. Knowing this, you should have some aces up your sleeve: solutions that will be affordable but won’t hurt the quality of your product in the end. Staff augmentation is both of these things. You can read more about it here.
Wondering what kind of obstacles can get in the way of moving your product development forward that staff augmentation could solve? Some of the biggest challenges are the following:
An oversized development team
In general, it’s not the best idea to hire a full-stack, in-house development team right away. Especially when you’re focused on creating an MVP: in this stage, you do not create a final product with all the bells and whistles imaginable. What you need is a solid basis. Keeping a big team on your payroll is draining to your budget and your social batteries too – the team has to be managed and constantly encouraged to keep their eyes on the prize.
You can learn more about the benefits and downsides of hiring an in-house team from our related article:
Staff augmentation allows you to hire the right people at the right time, for as long as you need. Think of it as playing with puzzles: the big picture is created from smaller particles. Once a few of the pieces fall into place, you no longer think about them but move on to piece another fragment together. Your team, powered by staff augmentation, could work similarly.
Hiring juniors
Out of the top 20, 7 reasons why startups fail are connected to people. Unfortunately, passion isn’t enough to bring the product to the market. Even the most innovative idea won’t take off if it’s designed by someone with little to no experience. Not to mention that fixing mistakes made by amateurs cost time and money.
By choosing staff augmentation, you deal with people who have enough experience to work at a reputable software house. You can trust their expertise. If you have any doubts about their capabilities, you can talk directly to the person who can vouch for them – their boss. Not to mention they can work remotely.
Moving too slow
The time-to-market aspect is a crucial point in delivering a successful digital product. Each iteration or sprint can be measured in monetary terms. At BinarApps, we put the Pareto Principle into digital product development. Thanks to this we realized that with each new iteration, 20% will be new features and fixes while 80% of the features will be the same as the last version. So, do you really need to keep the entire team that has worked on the previous iteration? More often than not, taking another step will require developers with different skill sets. Staff augmentation allows you to create and disband teams according to the current needs. It means you can hire a developer for just a month with no strings attached!
Not enough feedback
Running a project isn’t simple: there’s a lot of big and small things that have to be taken into consideration. It’s easy to miss details while chasing the dream. To be perfectly honest: sometimes, there has to be a person on the team who will point out the obvious. Experts hired through staff augmentation service have worked on more than one project. It may sound harsh, but they aren’t emotionally invested in your company, which is a good thing – the mind comes before the brain for them. They won’t hesitate to tell you what’s not working. It’s easy to surround yourself with yes men; try to always have someone who’ll tell you exactly how it is. To achieve that goal, pay attention to the developer’s soft skills. We have discussed this in another entry on our blog, check it out here.
Summary
Digital product development can be staggered by not getting the right people for the job. Whether the team is under-skilled or simply too big to manage properly, the result is the same: time and money wasted. It slows down the development process and doesn’t give you enough feedback from the team who just isn’t fit for your project. Staff augmentation provides you with remote software engineers who have relevant work experience. They can stay on your team for as long as you need them. It can be half a year or three weeks. You can save yourself the trouble of hiring and de-hiring people and focus on what’s important. Finally, staff augmentation gives you experts who will be honest with you. If you’re ready for this, do not hesitate to reach out and discuss our staff augmentation service in detail.
May 11, 2020
