Staff Augmentation: Nightmare Scenarios
The web is piddled with the offerings of the staff augmentation. Each opened website describes the luscious opportunities open while hiring this or that team. In this article I would like to show all the aces and provide the advice to make your staff augmentation experience a roaring success.
In case you’ve already decided to fill in the blanks in your talent pool by means of external resources you might have thought over reducing the risks that come along with the outsourcing services. Undoubtedly, the idea to save up to 70-80% of the costs by delegating tasks to India or the Eastern Europe seems to be sweet… but the bee stings. The truth is, it takes years of market investigation and sometimes a couple of epic fails to find out whether it’s worth it or not, and what kind of staff augmentation model will suit you best. To understand what risks are awaiting you while hiring an outside team is the first step to adequately approach the augmentation process. I tried to make a list of critical outsourcing scenarios that can turn out into a living nightmare.
Scenario 1. The hidden costs
After reading a pile of reputable business newspapers, Mr. White, CEO of the middle-size IT company realized that the work of Salesforce developer in the United States can be done for 5 times less price with the involvement of offshore resources. Having calculated the possible revenue from such a deal, he hired 4 employees to complete company’s current projects. Mr. White’s team sent the specs to the outsourced guys and expected them to start the work right away. What was their surprise when they found out the offshore team needs 3 months of knowledge transfer and a couple of business trips to get on working track! Add there the proper timesheet auditing, invoicing, and consulting work fees… The price the company had to pay exceeded possible savings.
Lesson to be learned: Do not expect one-day gains. Offshore staff augmentation should be treated as a long-term investment with a long payoff period. Syntegrico expert team does a tremendous auditing and estimating work before getting down to project, so you can mitigate all the risks in advance.
Scenario 2. Double-crossing
Fallen for the cheapest price in the world, SF consultant Mr. Pink from “May the Force” neglected the corporate culture gaps and trusted the development of a custom AppExchange app to the augmented team. After the deployment of the end product, he discovered the same application, similar as two peas but made by another company. It comes for no surprise that after proper investigation it turned out to be developed by the same team.
Lesson to be learned: The representatives of the countries with the cheapest resources often show little or no respect for intellectual property. Pay a little bit more for diligence and time spent for a well-elaborated security plan and contract examined by professionals and save twice.
Scenario 3. When business meets code
Stacy, an HR-manager at marketing company, heard from the colleagues about the reputable Salesforce development team and was nothing but happy to headhunt them from a big insurance company. However, beyond expectations, the process didn’t go with a swing, and the reason revealed soon. The augmented staff simply didn’t understand marketing business needs – what it is supposed to do and why. Their field of expertise was constrained to the insurance industry.
Lesson to be learned: It’s not that simple to identify the real experts from the technical wannabe’s. But experience is the key. Syntegrico specialists have proven their reputation working for 200+ customers from marketing, finance, medical, non-profit, insurance industries, to name a few, and have got awareness of business requirements and market needs, and the skills to analyze risks for the assigned project.
Scenario 4. “It doesn’t make sense, you idiot!”
Overall, IT-director Mr. Orange thought that cultural differences won’t be a very big problem because IT companies are so global and diverse. Time-gap issue was easily solved by inviting Salesforce developer Cucumber onsite. After 2 weeks Mr. Orange got a claim from the customer for Cucumber was working on outdated Salesforce Customer Portal instead of Community.
In case when American developer would say “It doesn’t make sense, you idiot”, Cucumber had the “This doesn’t make sense, but this is the way Mr. Orange wanted it”-approach. Thus, work took more time and money to complete.
Lesson to be learned: The most evident disadvantages are language and mentality. Our team is 100% English-speaking and forward-thinking with European mentality of offering solutions and speaking up.
Scenario 5. Develop and go?
The story started when Resource Manager Mr. Blue from a startup outsourcing company was assigned with a project from a major
business. Instead of developing Salesforce development skills needed to deliver the client’s tasks or hiring a local specialist, Mr. Blue decided to delegate the project to the dedicated team. To ensure delivering the work on time and manage time overlaps, they augmented the team with the American PM. Unfortunately, after completing their daily work, the conductors disappeared till the next day, so the communication process failed. Being a small startup at the time, company couldn’t add the second PM to cover both time zones.
Lesson to be learned: Overlap time matters but what you should really care about is effective time and resource management. Syntegrico provides certified Project Manager Professionals and certified Scrum Masters, and all the projects are being tracked in Jira with full access of Client to follow the processes.
Syntegrico offers you the beneficial opportunity to predict outsourcing scenarios and turn possible nightmares into sweet dreams. With a proven track record of Salesforce staff augmentation, we follow a distinctive approach of professional development and project management services leading to quality impacts. To get more info about our current solutions, get connected.
