The talent shortage in the USA and the UK has made it challenging to find the required experts for your project. It becomes even more difficult because other companies poach skilled specialists by all means.
What’s more, hiring and managing experts on site takes a lot of time, effort, and cost. As a result, many global companies opt for IT team augmentation. For instance, Microsoft, Mercedez, Lebara, Viber, and other tech giants extended their teams with offshore experts.
But where and how to find top experts for your team augmentation? What are the main benefits of team augmentation? How to select a trusted provider of team augmentation services? Let’s find out together.
IT team augmentation: key advantages
Here are just a few benefits you can get from team augmentation:
- You are not limited by location and get access to the global talent pool;
- Team augmentation makes it easier to implement new technologies, as trusted providers usually have strong expertise in different domains;
- The vendor overtakes HR, administration, and infrastructure processes for your augmented team;
- You can scale your team up or down, according to your current business needs;
- It is possible to choose the level of responsibility you want to have over your team (extended team, managed team, outsourced team).
However, there are several challenges that can arise while augmenting your team.
IT team augmentation: disadvantages
- Training your new team members: you may need to train your augmented team to follow the internal processes and embrace the company culture;
- Potential ramp-ups: if your project requires a deep understanding of the internal processes and context of your company, it could be difficult for your new team members to keep up with this;
- Integrating your internal team with new members: it could be challenging to ensure that both your existing team and new experts are on the same page.
However, if you choose a reliable provider of IT augmentation services with long-standing experience, all these are minor challenges. Trusted vendors help you avoid miscommunications and streamline the workflows of your in-house and augmented teams.
Undoubted advantages of IT team augmentation outweigh minor challenges. What’s more, choosing the right provider of team augmentation services makes managing your team even easier. But where to look for a reliable partner? Let’s find out.
Where to find a partner for IT augmentation services?
Eastern Europe is one of the most viable options when it comes to IT team augmentation services. The vast talent pool, excellent price-quality ratio, and cultural proximity to Western countries make the region an alluring outsourcing destination.
The countries that are home to the most significant numbers of developers are Ukraine, Poland, and Romania. So, we will view these countries in more detail.
IT augmentation services in Ukraine:
Ukraine boasts a vast talent pool of over 192,000 professional developers. The country has over 800 vendors that provide team augmentation services. The majority of these experts reside in five large IT hubs: Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Odesa.
Ukrainian developers are known for their skills. Various rankings recognize them. For instance, HackerRank places Ukrainian 11th among the best outsourcing destinations and the first in the field ‘Security.’ TopCoder, at the same time, recognizes Ukrainian professionals as the 6th most skilled worldwide.
The country boasts nine universities, recognized by Times Higher Education World University Rankings that offer top computer science programs when it comes to tech education. What’s more, Ukrainian universities graduate 39,000 computer science students annually.
IT augmentation services in Poland:
Poland is home to over 295,000 professional developers. However, 40% of them work in the BPM sector, so they are unavailable for IT team augmentation.
Poland has seven major IT hubs: Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Tri-City, Katowice, Wroclaw, and Rzeszow.
Like Ukrainian experts, Polish professionals are also recognized for their skills. They are ranked 5th most skilled by TopCoder, and third by SkillValue.
Polish universities graduate 75,000 ICT students each year, ensuring constant talent inflow as far as tech education is concerned.
IT augmentation services in Romania:
Romanian providers of IT team augmentation services employ around 120,000 professional developers. The vast majority of these experts live in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, and Iasi.
Romania houses 41 technical higher education institutions. These universities graduate 7,500 computer science experts each year.
The country boasts a high English proficiency level, as stated by the EF English Proficiency Index.
Learn more about the best offshore development countries
How to choose a suitable cooperation model?
Choosing the right cooperation model is critical for successful team extension. So, we will view different cooperation models to help you decide what will work best for you.
Depending on the level of control you would like to have over your project, we usually distinguish between the following models: extended team, managed team, and outsourced team. Let’s compare them.
Extended team
This option is the best fit if you want to stay in charge of team management entirely. With this model, you get additional engineering capacities and maximum control over your project. You are the one to interview candidates and make all business decisions. Your provider of team augmentation services is responsible for administration and flexible scaling.
Managed team
If you need a team that will take over a part of your software development process, the managed team will work best for you. In this case, you maintain enough scalability and share responsibility with your partner. You make critical business decisions, share your vision but are not in charge of all the processes.
Outsourced team
Within this cooperation model, you get a finished product. Your partner is responsible for building a team, all business decisions, and risks. An outsourced team is the best cooperation model if you want to minimize your engagement process.
How to select a provider of team augmentation services?
- Consider vendors with 1,000+ professionals on board. Such companies are more likely to have resources you need internally;
- Look for a partner with a powerful employer brand. Such a vendor will be able to find the best experts for your project;
- Opt for a larger vendor, as they usually have streamlined recruitment processes, which is critical to staff your team effectively and promptly;
- Assess vendor’s tech expertise and make sure that it has delivered successful projects similar to yours;
- Make sure that your potential vendor has experienced delivery managers on board. These professionals will be responsible for effective team integration.
Businesses that benefit from IT team augmentation
1. Fortune 500 industrial supply company
This client needed to transform its existing on-premise data solution and move it to the cloud to ensure better scalability, enhance reliability, and cut expenditures. A team from N-iX has helped this company develop the cloud-agnostic strategy towards cloud migration and built a unified data platform on AWS. As a result, the client can access all data in one place, predict and optimize costs, easily change a cloud provider, and deliver outstanding service at scale.
2. cleverbridge
cleverbridge is a company that provides full-fledged e-commerce and subscription management solutions for monetizing digital goods, online services, and SaaS. The client has reached out to N-iX to redesign its solution to increase customer outreach and improve customer experience.
Our experts have helped cleverbridge migrate the desktop solution to the web, build brand-new UX design, and improve their value proposition to clients by designing lucid BI reports. With a new web-based application that is available across different operating systems, browsers, and mobile devices and improved UX design, our customer is now able to expand market reach and enhance customer retention.
3. WEINMANN Emergency
WEINMANN Emergency is a medical technology company based in Hamburg that develops life-saving equipment used in emergency medical services, hospitals, and military medical corps. WEINMANN Emergency needed to bring new products to market faster and make sure they comply with medical regulations.
Together with N-iX experts, our client sped up the software development process and released a software product that complies with all required industry and security standards.
4. Global Fortune 100 multinational engineering and technology company
The client needed to streamline inventory management for more warehouses, but the existing logistics solution was difficult to scale. So it was essential to modernize the platform to improve the efficiency of internal logistics.
N-iX experts have helped the client transform their logistics platform by introducing microservices architecture, DevOps best practices, and implementing several advanced technologies, including ML, AI, NLP, computer vision, etc.
The improved logistics platform will allow the client to scale fast to more warehouses, ensuring better performance and responsiveness.
5. Leading automotive technology company
The client needed to build a SaaS platform that would standardize and streamline the development of products of different departments and help reduce costs. However, first, the company had to validate the product idea, measure its ROI, and mitigate potential risks.
N-iX has helped the client prove SaaS platform feasibility and get everything they needed for a successful kick-off of a large and costly project, such as a working prototype of the platform, a product architecture, a product backlog, and detailed business case calculations.
Why choose N-iX for IT team augmentation?
- N-iX is one of the largest IT outsourcing vendors in Eastern Europe that boasts an internal pool of 2,200+ tech experts;
- The company has a robust recruitment team of 70+ recruiters that can find top-notch professionals for your project;
- N-iX has a couple of offices and delivery centers across Europe, the US, and Sweden. Thus you get access to the vast talent pool of 520K developers;
- Such enterprises and tech companies, as Lebara, Fluke Corporation, Gogo, and many others, chose N-iX as their strategic IT outsourcing partner;
- Team augmentation services have been the core focus of N-iX since 2002.
