Flexible recruitment solutions have become an integral part of a vast number of IT businesses that seek to benefit from perks like increased cost efficiency, access to a wide pool of talents, enhanced team agility, and productivity. Despite being an undoubtedly worthy staffing model, in-house team augmentation is associated with a number of concerns that withhold companies from leveraging the full potential of this hiring strategy. The question of effective outstaff team control is one of those deterrents.

Monitoring-Associated Staff Augmentation Risks

The inability of a staff augmentation service vendor to create the environment for convenient and effective external team supervision entails a bunch of complications that can negatively influence the result of the jointly developed project. Here are the aspects that will be under exceptional pressure:

Management

Ensuring the proper functioning of a single in-house team is one thing, but when managers have to deal with specialists from the outside who might be located thousands of miles away - it’s a whole new type of responsibility. Make sure your managers have enough expertise to tackle the alignment process.

Communication

Having an array of video-conferencing tools at hand, it seems easy to establish an effective channel of communication between the teams. However, time zone differences might introduce a major challenge since the adjustment of working hours is a compromise not everyone is ready to make.

Privacy

Scaling up your internal team means letting in third-party specialists that might not be concerned about your company’s privacy as much as in-house experts are. So the protection of the corporate data should be ensured before the outstaff team gets to it.

Coordination

Another aspect to pay attention to is efficient real-time project development coordination. The absence of clear-cut and understandable strategy, plan, and digital tools that enable both teams to know what the other party is working on is a major setback on the way to a successful project launch.

An Infallible Guide to Effective Outstaff Team Monitoring

Having concerns about external team supervision is okay. The key thing here is to be aware of the possible pitfalls and protect yourself from encountering them at the early stages of dealing with the staff augmentation service vendor. Here are the practical steps you can take to avoid monitoring complications and ensure fruitful and durable cooperation.

Document Your Requirements

Before diving into the project development together with a third-party team, make sure to prepare a set of detailed papers that describe the process itself, methodologies the vendor is expected to use, functions of the external experts, non-disclosure agreements and approximate deadline dates. Although you can’t foresee the actual project development process in all its details, the information you put down will serve as a clear-cut guide and make the monitoring easier.

Negotiate the Communication Channels

Effective team communication is the main pillar of staff augmentation service without which it makes no sense. That’s why communication channels are the first thing to be discussed with your vendor. Real-time interaction free of technical obstacles will smooth the process out, allowing your project to stay on the right track. Using appropriate means of communication, you can track the project development and introduce the necessary changes on time.

Decide on the Project Monitoring Approach

When it comes to project supervision, there are two ways. A staff augmentation vendor can appoint a manager that will serve as an intermediary between you and the team of external specialists. The benefit of having a separate person who will focus on the transfer of information is that you’ll be unburdened from a huge amount of work and have access to all the necessary data on request. If you prefer hands-on monitoring, your vendor should provide you with the tools that will connect you directly to third-party developers and assist in managing a scaled team. Make sure that the vendor you go for implements cutting-edge project management approaches and that the team is ready to adjust to your supervising preferences.

Go Over the Responsibility Areas

Choosing the right service vendor, ensure one has clear-cut viable agreements on the level of the provided service. Because if there is none, you won’t be able to sue the vendor company, or get a refund. To avoid disillusionment and substantial financial loss, insist on strict project development reporting, team performance results, and KPI implementation proofs. If the potential service provider is reluctant to be absolutely transparent and share all the metrics - that’s a red flag.

Suggest Your Own Monitoring Options

'Supervision is your area of responsibility, so don’t be shy to suggest any of the familiar or traditional monitoring methods. Even if you see that external specialists enjoy the required tech stack expertise, have a strong portfolio and reputation, but you still want to introduce some changes to the supervision process, do so. A reliable staff augmentation service vendor will always take into account your concerns, adapt to them, or find a compromise.'

Opt for Time Zone and Cultural Similarities

The quality of the cooperation and thus of monitoring depends on the level of convergence between the two teams, which is typically based on the time zones, localities, work ethics, and corporate values. The more similar these factors are, the easier it will be for specialists to blend in. Similarities are fundamental for strong communication and efficient monitoring.

Extend the Scope of Tools

The range of tools available for effective inter-team coordination and project development supervision doesn’t have to be limited by those that your vendor usually employs. Make sure the team is ready to use JIRA, TeamClerk, Trello, Asana or any other tools you might find effective.

Wrapping Up

Hands-on monitoring of the outstaff team is essential to ensure the quality of the developed solution, its timely launch, and successful functioning. These are the priorities for both parties involved, meaning that if the vendor you turned to is reluctant to establish an efficient supervising environment, it’s time to say goodbye and look for another one. Having our tips in mind, you’re sure to settle for a reliable staff augmentation service provider and together create a transparent and convenient process monitoring architecture.