What is Staff Augmentation and What Flavors Does it Come In?
Staff Augmentation may be just a new fancy way of saying “Contractor,” or “Consultant,” or similar. However you want to define it, external professionals you bring on to your project become embedded with your own team; whether they’re on site or remote. Typically, these temporary team members will report to your own Business Analysts, Project Manager, Scrum Masters, or whomever your product/project owner happens to be. If you’re sourcing this talent from a firm, they will have their own general management and possibly project management, but but will usually report to someone on your team as a matter of day-to-day workflow.
Typically, staff augmentation will be a relatively simple affair. You’re going to hire an individual or a firm to provide contracting services; usually for a set period of time, maybe with an option to extend a contract. You’re buying skills that you will deploy to a project. This could be to backfill one or two people or add a special skill on a temporary basis. Another option is you’re staffing a whole team. This could be where the externally contracted firm provides not only engineering talent, but also design, project management, and possibly business analysis as well.