Effective IT Staff Augmentation in a Cloud Environment

When you’ve got a tight budget, running a cloud team can feel like bailing out a boat with a teaspoon. Have you thought about trying an IT staff augmentation bilge pump?

Economies have constant ebbs and flows. Rolling from one roaring climb to another spiralling low.

But, you shouldn’t let that affect the services that you provide your customers. Economic instability or not, they’re only going to remember the level of services that they received during that time.

Today we’ll take a look into one of a few ways to help your team stay on top of your cloud infrastructure to ensure that your services are always available and performing as they should.

IT staff augmentation in a nutshell

IT staff augmentation when referring to cloud computing specifically, is the practice of temporarily hiring additional IT staff with specialized skills and expertise to work on specific projects or tasks within a cloud computing environment. Effectively giving you the ability to scale your team up and down as needed to fill the gaps of your in-house team.

As more businesses adopt cloud technology,staff augmentation is becoming an increasingly popular strategy for enhancing IT capabilities and achieving business goals. Staff augmentation involves supplementing your in-house IT staff with additional personnel, either on a temporary or permanent basis. In a cloud-based environment, effective staff augmentation is essential for optimizing cloud operations and achieving success.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss strategies for effective staff augmentation in a cloud-based environment. By understanding your business needs, selecting the right partner, onboarding and integrating personnel, and managing performance and results, you can ensure that your IT staff augmentation strategy aligns with your business objectives and delivers the results you need.

Here’s what we’ll touch on today:

  • Understanding your business needs
  • Selecting the right IT staff augmentation partner
  • Onboarding and integration
  • Managing performance

Understanding Your Business Needs

To develop a good IT staff augmentation strategy, you need to understand your business needs. Before augmenting your IT staff, assess your current IT staff capabilities and identify your business goals. This way, you can choose the right personnel with the right skills and expertise, aligning your strategy with your business needs to achieve your goals.

  • Evaluate the skills and expertise of your current IT staff
  • Develop a plan to augment your IT staff, including the required skills and expertise, duration of the augmentation, and number of personnel needed
  • Make sure your plan aligns with your business needs to ensure the right personnel with the right skills are selected to achieve your goals

Selecting the Right IT Staff Augmentation Partner

When you know what your business needs are, the next step is to choose the right IT partner. To do this, consider their experience, reliability, and ability to offer the skills and expertise you require. Working with a dependable and experienced IT staff augmentation provider guarantees that you will choose personnel who will deliver the outcomes you need.

  • Thoroughly evaluate potential partners, including their experience, reputation, and ability to provide the required skills and expertise
  • Consider pricing and budget when selecting an augmentation partner
  • Define the roles and responsibilities of personnel, establish communication channels, and develop a plan for managing and optimizing your IT staff augmentation strategy

Onboarding and Integration

After you have chosen your team, the next step is to onboard and integrate them. To do this effectively, it’s best to set clear expectations and goals, provide any necessary training and resources, and establish communication channels. You can also integrate augmentation personnel into your in-house team by assigning them to specific projects, providing mentors, and encouraging collaboration.

  • Provide clear expectations for IT staff augmentation personnel, including training on your company’s processes, specific technologies and tools, and access to your company’s knowledge base and documentation
  • Assign IT staff augmentation personnel to specific projects and provide them with experienced mentors for guidance and support
  • Foster a collaborative culture by promoting communication, teamwork, and inclusivity between your IT staff augmentation personnel and your in-house team

Managing Performance and Results

To ensure that your augmentation strategy delivers the results you need, you must manage performance and results. This involves setting performance expectations and goals, tracking performance using tools and techniques such as project management software, and managing and optimizing results using best practices such as performance feedback and rewards. These steps can help you achieve your objectives.

  • Set performance expectations and goals for personnel, and assess their performance using project management software
  • Use feedback and rewards to manage and optimize the results of your strategy
  • Establish clear communication channels and a reporting structure to ensure personnel are accountable for their performance and results

What did we learn today?

IT staff augmentation is a useful strategy to improve your IT capabilities and meet your business goals in a cloud-based environment. To make sure your strategy meets your business objectives and delivers the desired results, you need to understand your business needs, choose the right IT staff augmentation partner, onboard and integrate personnel, and manage performance and outcomes. By following these strategies, you can optimize your cloud operations and achieve success.

If you’re looking to add flexibility to your cloud team, reach out to us at Autimo. We’re cloud specialists and we know a thing or two about finding great cloud people. So if you’re looking for Web Devs, UX Designers, QAs…. then keep on looking! We’re all about cloud technology and DevOps!

Will Sheldon

Founder & CEO

Will is the founder and CEO of Autimo. He created Autimo as a way to fill the gap of skilled Cloud and Devops engineering in the market. His vision is to democratize cloud knowledge and ‘raise the water’ level of cloud engineering competency for everyone.

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