Have you ever thought of the process of scaling up your team and hiring qualified software developers at the right time?
It will enable you to significantly enhance your talent inventory and acquire the appropriate skill set at a fast pace when the market needs increase. So, if your company’s growth rate is not as high as you desired, expanding your team with new talent may be the solution to the problem.
But like most new relationships, there comes certain dilemmas along with the benefits. While working with external resources, project managers often face problems such as communication, cultural differences or quality and security concerns. All these issues, if not controlled, can cause delays on your project or act as continuous irritants.
All these challenges can be addressed if we put individual efforts. Thus, you can really leverage augmented teams without significant inefficiencies if you establish a purposefully constructed organizational structure for integration, effectively communicate the terms, and establish the objectives of a new team member in the particular context.
Certainly, there are various models for collaborating with professionals that many of us follow around the globe through a process called team augmentation, but there are issues that can plague any organization around the world. Many of the customers we enjoyed serving at Craftsmen-a reliable service provider of software team augmentation services, face these problems at one point or another. But, over the years we have improved on knowledge and strategy that we have gained from coming across such hurdles and came up with practical ways and means of eradicating them and were able to provide our clients with the best services in the world.
In this blog, we will reveal top 20 challenges that arise when companies expand their software teams and give you ways on how you can deal with all these complications to ensure that expectations are met.
That way, you will know how to overcome these challenges to ensure that your augmented team will compete favorably with the in-house employees while achieving the set goals and objectives within the prescribed time frame and yield positive profit.
1. Lack of Team Integration
→ Difficulty integrating augmented teams with existing in-house teams:
The biggest challenge that many organizations face when it comes to team augmentation is how to blend the workers from the outside with the in-house team. The people from outside your organization could work differently from your people – their communication methods or work approach, or even practices could be quite different from how your organization works. This might result in misunderstandings, lack of cooperation, and in the long run it might even lower the work efficiency. Another discomfort the augmented team could face may occur due to geographical differences in locations leading to emotional isolation or feeling uninvolved in the in-house team.
When the team integration is not smooth, problems such as conflicting with team goals and lack of efficiencies may occur leading to slow project or task completions and contradictory situations among the two teams.
How to overcome the lack of team integration:
→ Establish clear communication protocols and facilitate team bonding through collaboration tools and regular meetings with the relevant teams:
In order to overcome the challenge of team integration it is advisable to begin with setting out lay down protocols on how the team will communicate from the word go. Determine when and through which means and to which teams communication should be conducted. The use of available communication platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Team or Zoom in the organization can help everyone be informed at any given time regardless of their location. It is important that in-house employees and augmented workers are all aware of the tools being used and can access the platforms.
The simplest way that both of the teams integrated with one another more successfully is by having weekly check-in meetings. It will also be unconstructive not to have time devoted to regular meetings, either daily, or weekly, during which the members of the team can discuss what has been done, what has been met or not met or what had been done wrong in the process. Team building is also another way through which augmented and in-house staff can be inclined towards building rapport by organizing virtual team building activities/fellowship and informal chat.
These steps are most useful in ensuring that proper communication is achieved and constant relation is built between the involved teams. This will help in integration so that the process will be smooth thus leading to formulation of a well harmonized team. In the long run, this will enhance the rate of success and results of the particular project.
That is, to facilitate the smooth integration process, one has to keep the communication line open and try to ensure that the teams spend more time together. This results in a better understanding within the team allowing them to work better together towards delivering the best for the project in question.
2. Communication Barrier
→ Misunderstandings due to language, cultural, or time zone differences:
One of the major challenges of software team augmentation is most often the communication gaps, where different languages are spoken. This can be due to language differences, cultural differences or even time-zones while dealing with off-shore or remote employees.
These differences can lead to several issues:
- Misunderstandings and Miscommunications: This is because when team members write to each other, give instructions or include feedback, but are limited by their ability to fluently communicate in the other person’s language, misunderstandings might occur in such situations.
- Delays in Deliverables: The communication challenges may also lead to more time being spent since the different teams will take time to get the other side’s perception of what they need.
- Language Difficulties: Some of the team members may also lack fluency in the language used which reduces their communication leading to miscommunications amongst the team.
- Cultural Differences: Using certain words or gestures to express a certain idea, to explain one’s thoughts, or even to say ‘thank you’ in one culture can be different in the other culture and it results in conflicts.
- Time Zone Challenges: Possibility of working during the same time of the day is also hampered due to large time-zone differences that results in less timely communication.
Overall, these barriers may lead to low productivity of the team which may affect the success rate of the project in the event due to the barriers being not well-addressed. People’s interaction styles, including their expressions, mannerisms and even the way they use humor can also lead to communication breakdowns due to differences in cultural aspects. Because of the time-zone differences, it is difficult to have a number of teams working at the same time which creates communication and coordination challenges.
Therefore, these communication barriers result in misunderstandings, time delays and decreased teaming. To avoid these challenges affecting the end results of a project, we should follow certain strategies to overcome such miscommunications fostering effective team relations.
→ How to overcome the communication barriers amongst the augmented and in-house team:
Use standardized communication tools, ensure overlapping work hours, and provide cross-cultural training if needed.
Let’s see how can weo overcome the communication barriers in details:
- Use standardized communication tools and protocols: Make sure that the two teams are on the same page as regards the specific tools used in communication and sharing such as collaboration platforms, video conferencing, and instant messaging. This leads to having one common ground through which understanding in terms of message conveying is enhanced.
- Ensure overlapping work hours: It’s better to look for occasions when in-house and augmented teams have enough overlapping working day time. This makes handling real-time conflicts and issues more convenient.
- Assist with cross-cultural adaptation: Only if necessary, arrange sessions to help the augmented team adapt to different cultures as well as how individuals in that cultural background communicate and their working environment. This can enhance the understanding that comes with empathy and decrease misinterpretation which may result in conflict.
- Encourage written communication: Communicate less verbally in order to cut back on face-to-face conversations that may be hard to translate causing misunderstandings.
- Schedule regular check-ins: Effective team’s communication and relations could be built by the regular team meetings in turn and general. Hence, team issues can be solved and team relations could be improved and well-maintained.
In case discrepancies occur due to communication barriers, applying some of the mentioned strategies may help in order to effectively reduce the rising issues when it comes to software team augmentation.
3. Misaligned Expectations
→ Diverging expectations taking place amongst the augmented and in-house team members
While working with an augmented team, expectations may vary between the in-house conventional team and the outsourcing team. This can happen due to various factors:
- Unclear Scope and Responsibilities: For example, if the project scope, deliverables, roles and responsibilities of each team involved are not clearly stated in the onset they are likely to create confusion and misunderstandings. The in-house team may have specific expectations of what the augmented team will perform. At the same time, the in-house team should also consider that the augmented team may also have different expectations.
- Differing Work Styles and Processes: It is normal that the core team is in a particular flow when it comes to the way of working, communicating and managing projects. The augmented team, however, may be accustomed to other methods of functioning and therefore may react to certain procedures in a certain way. This leads to conflict if intervention on the part of the management is not properly executed.
- Varying Levels of Context and Domain Knowledge: The people in the core team are very much conversant with the firm, its products and the specific project concerned. While, the augmented team, in this case, may not have the same information sharing as a result of working together in the same organization; there are sudden breakages of understanding and expectations.
- Dissimilar Performance Metrics: It is understood that the core team and augmented team may have different kinds of key performance indicators (KPIs) or success standards, and eventually, different notions of ‘ doing a good job.
- Differing Cultural Norms: It can also be seen that the cultural barriers both on the organizational level and on the regional level are also a cause for the mismatch of expectations. What can be expected by one team as appropriate or as a constructive behavior may be perceived differently by the other team.
→ How to deal with misaligned expectations thriving for better outcomes:
- Define roles, responsibilities, and goals clearly at the start of the project:
- To overcome the challenge of misaligned expectations, it’s crucial to take proactive steps, starting with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and goals from the very beginning:
- Clearly Define Scope, Roles, and Responsibilities: Devote much time on elaborating the concept of the project in terms of the scope and outcomes, the list of activities to be completed and the division of responsibilities between the closed and the expanded project teams. Make sure that goals are clearly communicated so that everyone has a clear vision on what is expected of him or her.
- Establish Clear Goals and Metrics: As part of the preparation for the project tasks, work out with both teams on what objectives of the project are most important to achieve and what measures can be used to determine the effectiveness of the project. Ensure these are consistent between the core and augmented teams so that all the individuals have a clue as to what it takes to deliver a good job.
- Align on Processes and Communication Protocols: Having defined the assigned roles, duties and objectives, get through the required communication means, working tools and cooperation processes. Integrate yourself into your current processes by inviting the augmented team to join in on them and also be ready to incorporate their practices into your settings on occasions.
- Provide Context and Knowledge Sharing: Take time to engage in in-depth knowledge sharing meetings to ensure that the new members of the augmented team are well acquainted with your organization, products, and the relevant project environment. It would also be imperative to promote on-go communication to ensure that all the gaps in the knowledge sharing process are closed.
- Foster Cultural Understanding: Schedule a cross-cultural training or team building with the other team, this would enable the two teams to come up with an understanding of the norms, ways of communicating, and working. Promote the culture of diversity where everyone is accepted and equal opportunities should be accorded to all people.
By going through the recommendations mentioned above of designing work, individuals, roles and goals at the formation level, it is possible to provide a structure of working on aligned expectations in an efficient and a high performing augmented software team.
4. Quality Control Issues
→ Inconsistent code quality or development practices:
Another difficulty that can come across while employing an augmented software team is concern with the quality of the produced code among other software development practices. There is always the possiblity of diverse coding standards, testing, and project management from the augmented teams as compared to your in-house teams.
This lack of consistency can lead to a number of problems:
- Fragmented Codebase: But if developers are writing it in a stylistically inconsistent way, this leads to certain aspects of the codebase that are just chaotic to work with being created. This will deter future development and even make it difficult to recruit other personnel into the team.
- Compromised Security: A lack of consistent implementations of the software security concepts can compromise the entire system for example inadequate input validation or access controls.
- Reduced Efficiency: What may also be observed is that the various development workflows and the tools used may bring in certain levels of bottlenecks and affect the overall delivery of the project. Productivity is reduced due to context switching and problem solving time which come about as a result of non–standardization.
- Poor Quality Assurance: If there is no standard way of providing quality assurance, then the bugs and the defects that should have been caught may not be and this will result in providing a product that is substandard and may not meet the needs of the clients.
→ How you can control these quality issues:
To overcome these quality control issues, it is important to establish clear guidelines and processes that the entire team, both in-house and augmented, must follow:
- Standardize Development Practices: Standardize and describe coding conventions, testing methodologies, deployment strategies and any other development standard. That it is crucial to make it clear to all the team members irrespective of their geographical origin that they are expected to act in line with those standards and have been trained to do so.
- Implement Continuous Integration and Deployment: Make sure that through the proper implementation of the CI/CD system, the codebase is automatically built, tested, and deployed. It alerts one chances of finding out quality issues early enough bearing in mind that reliability of delivery is highly observed.
- Conduct Regular Code Reviews: Daily, it is recommended to give each other feedback on code they have written in the form of pair programming or in the form of a code-reviewing session. This serves in enhancing the standard of the codes used and to check for any differences in the codes from the standard ones.
- Automate Quality Checks: Integrate quality, security and compliance checks into the CI/CD pipeline. Use security scanners and tools like Linters, Static Code Analyzer to simply check the codebase for quality, security and compliance issues.
- Foster a Culture of Quality: Reiterate the message to every member of the team so as to encourage quality. Explain to the developers that they should be the ones of their codebase so they can maintain focus on the quality of the code.
Doing so will allow the augmented team to work harmoniously in collaboration with your in-house team, to produce high quality, secure, efficient and complex software that meets your organization’s standards.
5. Difficulty in Managing Remote Teams
→ Tracking progress and ensuring accountability with remote augmented teams:
As the practice of having an augmented software team involves working with outsiders or third parties, one of the biggest issues to work on is the lack of proper communication with a remote employee. This is especially the case if the team members are in different zones/or time-zones making it challenging for you to monitor individual work and ensure they are being disciplined.
Some of the specific issues that can arise include:
- Lack of Visibility: In particular, there are typified ways of interacting with the team; thus, it can be more challenging to monitor their work and assignments throughout the day. It can be a little difficult to know when there are certain complications or impediments within the organizational processes or when these occur on the road.
- Difficulty Measuring Productivity: Unfortunately, it could be extremely challenging to measure the workers’ productivity and overall output if the staff is not located with the main team. This may cause doubt whether or not the augmented team is as effective as it should be.
- Reduced Accountability: This is the case in situations where the team members are not physically within the work place hence making it difficult to monitor their work and or to check on their responsibilities as well as their accomplishments. These situations may lead to late submission of work, sections that are not well done or are even left undone.
- Communication Breakdowns: When everything is done remotely and instructions are given through emails or through the internet in general, there seems to be more chances of misunderstanding, longer response times and overall disconnection from the rest of the group.
- Feelings of Isolation: Teleworkers often claim to be out of touch with the core organizational team, let alone the overall organizational culture, which has implications on motivation.
How to manage augmented teams effectively:
To effectively manage a remote augmented team, it’s important to implement the following strategies:
- Establish Clear Processes and Expectations: Establish clear work processes, how the remote team is going to communicate and reporting structures of the team. The employees as well as other stakeholders need to know what is expected of them, what is expected from them and the standards that will be used to measure their performance.
- Leverage Collaboration and Productivity Tools: Ensure proper communication and consequently, invest in effective collaboration tools, project management software as well as strong remote working solutions. Such tools include Messaging and communication tools such as slack, project management tools such as Trello, Asana and video conferencing solutions.
- Implement Regular Check-ins and Reporting: Make daily/weekly meetings where you get to know how the team is doing individually, collectively as well as any issues that may be facing. Demand frequent status reports and periodic checks on the level of progress made to ensure that work is being carried out.
- Foster a Culture of Transparency: Ensure that proper flow of information and effective communication is maintained within the different functional teams of the organization. Encourage the exchange of information, difficulties and accomplishments with the purpose of establishing trust and common goals.
- Organize Team-Building Activities: Perform periodic training and activities that are related to employee bonding to make the virtual employees’ feel that they are also part of something bigger than themselves and that they also have colleagues whom they can trust and relate with.
- Provide Necessary Support and Resources: It is also important to ensure that the remote team is provided the same resources and training and the in-house employees. This might assist them in feeling more valued and capable of being productive in their tasks.
By following the above strategies, you’ll be able to effectively manage and coordinate with the augmented team with sufficient visibility to the process and track their project-based progress ensuring accountability in the teams where professionals will be well-aware of their contributions to the team’s progress.
6. Knowledge Transfer Gaps
→ Knowledge transfer between the in-house and augmented teams may be incomplete or inefficient:
Another concern that organizations have for software team augmentation is the ability to transfer knowledge between the core team and the external team. This is important so that if the regular team is out of action, the augmented team can be instantly plugged in to make their optimum contribution to a project.
Some of the common issues that can arise include:
- Incomplete Documentation: Probably the in-house team have a vast amount of uncodified knowledge regarding the project, code, work procedures, and organizational setting. This makes it a challenge to create an effective plan to train new team members to be integrated in the team.
- Lack of Dedicated Knowledge Sharing Sessions: Often if issues are not written down and there’s no specific block of organized slots, where people can just tell or explain things to each other, people overlook some details and context. The in-house team can be preoccupied with responsibilities to accomplish their work-related tasks and therefore may not share the knowledge actively.
- Differences in Domain Expertise: The members which comprise the augmented team may possess considerable technical expertise yet they are not conversant with the particular field in which the project is set. Overcoming this knowledge divide is not an easy task and always requires some time and a lot of effort.
- Geographical and Cultural Barriers: Due to the distance between the augmented team and the center of operations, communication, and interpersonal relations needed for efficient knowledge exchange may be challenging.
- Archived Information: There is always the risk of information being stored within the internal team and thus becomes challenging for the augmented team to access such information when they are needed.
How to overcome knowledge transfer gaps:
To overcome these knowledge transfer gaps, organizations should:
- Create Comprehensive Documentation: Ensure that you have proper documentation and documentation sharing of all and any project information, and workflows together with all technical aspects of the project that would be helpful to the entire project team, original and third-party. This will help the new members especially in the team, since they will take minimal time to understand or know the team’s status.
- Hold Regular Knowledge-Sharing Sessions: Set a standard frequency of meetings which involves face to face or workshops to enable the in-house team to explain to the newcomers the domain, share as well as update them on new procedures and past experiences. This makes it possible for the new team members of the agency to benefit from experience of the existing in-house staff.
- Provide Opportunities for Cross-Training: Provide a number of occasions for the augmented team to interface with the experts in-house, which will involve giving the team an opportunity to shadow such personnel or to be trained practically. This makes it easy for the new members to acquire in-depth and first hand experience.
- Foster Collaboration: It is recommended that relations between the in-house and augmented teams are highly communicative whether in person or through collaborative technology. This enables this kind of environment to fill the gaps which exist in each organization.
- Assign Mentors: Assign the augmented team members proper professionals from the in-house team and provide them with a proper mentor. The new members for that matter can be taken by the mentors and be taught aspects of the institution one on one.
- Incentivize Knowledge Sharing: Always ensure the in-house team is appreciated and encouraged especially when they undertake additional effort in onboarding and supporting the new augmented team members. That promotes the sharing of knowledge.
Through these effective concrete processes, organizations can guarantee that the augmented teams as well as the in-house teams are to transfer knowledge and work efficiently between each other. This enables the new members to come on board and get into the project and make valuable additions.
7. Security Concerns
→ Managing sensitive data and intellectual property when working with external teams:
Another major challenge that organizations encounter as they adopt an augmented software team is the security management issues of data and other forms of organizational assets. One of the challenges that may be easily identified when onboarding an external team is that too many people outside the immediate organization may gain access to secret and proprietary elements.
Some of the key security challenges include:
- Data Leaks: Augmented members of the team might work with important or sensitive data such as the customer data, financial data and other critical business data. Such data if mishandled or shared under wrong hands might result in expensive losses and brand reputational losses.
- Intellectual Property (IP) Theft: The external team members will be likely exposed to some of the organization’s secrets, source codes, products in development, and other valuable properties. The disadvantage of this IP is that it may be utilized improperly or taken to competitors.
- Compliance Violations: Some of the requirements that have to be met may relate to the data privacy and security especially where the firm is in a certain industry or location. Thus, failure to do so attracts serious penalties in form of fines and even legal prosecutions.
- Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities: Having an external team means that they become additional entry points that may act as entry vectors of the malware, phishing or hacking attempts. This puts the organizations’ entire IT system at risk.
- Lack of Visibility and Control: The issues that stakeholders face when working with a remote team are lower transparency of how security is being managed with the team and constraints on the ability to directly influence it.
How to protect your company’s security concerns while working with onshore and offshore augmented teams:
To mitigate these security concerns, organizations must take a proactive and multi-faceted approach:
Implement Strict Security Protocols: Implement strong security measures which the team should follow and this will include the augmenting members. For example:
- Make it compulsory for all the team individuals to take NDAs, where all the vital information and ideas belonging to the firm are preserved.
- Maintain reserved access that is secure yet controlled over the firm’s systems and data through the VPN and multi-factor authentications.
- Maintain restriction in data accessibility as well as in authorization according to the job role and requirement of every team member.
Conduct Thorough Background Checks: You also need to conduct your due diligence regarding the augmented team members and make sure that none of them has a criminal record when it comes to the issues concerning data privacy and manners. Perhaps, carrying out extensive security clearance tests could be useful.
Provide Rigorous Security Training: Impart to the respective stakeholders in the in-house team and the augmented organized team on the security measures to observe in protection of sensitive information as well as observing possible cyber threats to report. Security should become a necessity that requires refresher courses from time to time.
Monitor and Audit Activities Closely: Minnesota should closely watch every action performed by the augmented team, control access to specified systems and data, and perform periodic security checks to find out that the system is leak-proof.
Compartmentalize Access and Permissions: Minimize the interactions of the augmented team to only the relevant data and systems that are important in carrying out the tasks. As far as access to the organization’s IT assets are concerned, avoid providing them with unfettered access to the entity’s whole network.
Establish Robust Incident Response Plans: Establish proper policies for containing and reporting any security related issues with the enhanced team; this includes identifying data breaches of the augmented team. Make sure that the team is adequately familiar with these measures.
Following the above security measures will help companies to minimize the risks related to cooperation with an augmented software team and preserve the valuable assets and intellectual property of the organizations.
8. Time-Zone Differences
→ Maintaining and following work schedules or task lists across different time-zones:
The first major consideration when working with an augmented software team is a time difference as individuals have their working schedules. It can cause various discrepancies; especially in the management of the logistical aspects of work hence affect the flow of work.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Limited Overlap in Working Hours: In specific, If the in-house team and the augmented team are in two different time zones, the opportunity to find an overlap of working hours may be minimal. This makes not only real time collaboration and communication challenging.
- Delayed Responses and Feedback: Since the teams’ overlapping working hours are minimal, it takes hours or even a day to get the answers to some questions, feedback for the completed work, or clarifications of the requirements. This could also result in overall slow rates of the project being accomplished.
- Asynchronous Collaboration: If the teams do not have enough common working time, then they have to engage in asynchronous communication patterns which include, for instance, using email, handling tasks or documents. An example is when one sends an e-mail to his or her colleagues and they in turn are asked by the sender to explain what the message meant in brief which in its turn slows down the employees’ productivity due to lack of proper communication.
- Employee Burnout: In such circumstances, members of the teams will realize having to work during hours that are not their usual shift, tiredness and stress thus in the long run burn out.
- Reduced Team Cohesion: The correspondence and actual physical contact with other staff members, especially from the other in-house and augmented teams are severely limited, and thus the personnel may find it harder to develop good interpersonal working relationships and sense of common goals and objectives.
How to manage time-zone differences with augmented teams:
To effectively manage the challenges due to time-zone differences, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Identify Overlapping Work Hours: Evaluate the time zones of the in-house and augmented teams and find out the biggest possible overlap of the working hours. It is logical to concentrate the scheduling of important meetings and collaboration during these overlapping time periods.
- Implement Asynchronous Collaboration Tools: Allocate resources for managing projects and successful communication and documentation tools in which the work is asynchronous like communication apps, documents sharing and discussion boards like Slack. Recommend engagement in the use of these tools in sharing information and feedback since the students are in different time zones.
- Establish Clear Communication Protocols: Nonetheless, if working cross time zones is inevitable, set well understood and documented rules on response times, channels of communication and documentation procedures. In terms of the non-emergency matters, encourage the workers to use appropriate asynchronistic media which include emails as well as shared documents.
- Rotate Meeting Times: As a way of preventing any one team from bearing the brunt of the work outside the normal working hours, the time for the meetings should be altered periodically in a way that whoever is in the in-house team gets to work at the normal business hours while the members of the augmented team get to work at times when the business is closed.
- Foster Relationship Building: Allow virtual team-building activities, social gatherings and casual interactions between the in house and augments team so that people can be ready to work together despite the geographical barriers of location or time.
- Provide Flexibility and Support: Improve the employees’ work-life balance by implementing features that allow them to change the working schedule or work in parallel with others to counter the issues that appear when working across time zones. Ensure you offer your employees the right means for them to work remotely as this will improve efficiency.
Through these strategies, it is possible to seek coordination on work schedules and foster collaboration in order to enhance the productivity of a team and preserve cohesion particularly where the software team augmentation has invoked the issues of time zone differences.
9. Limited Commitment from Augmented Team
→ Augmented team members may lack long-term commitment or emotional investment in the project:
Another disadvantage or rather as a weakness of engaging an augmented software team is that, they may not be fully committed or have a high level of emotional attachment to the organization hosting them. Another key issue is that, in most cases the augmented team is not part of the company’s staff; therefore, the augmented team might be less motivated, less personally concerned with the project success and may not be as committed to its success as the regular employees of the company.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Lack of Ownership and Initiative: Augmented team members may also perceive their roles confined by contracts and may be more focused on accomplishing their set goals and may not be motivated to exceed responsibilities in the team. They may not bring out the issues themselves, if there are any and look for other ways of solving them.
- Inconsistent Engagement and Availability: The members of the augmented team may not be as easily contactable and responsive as the members in the dedicated in-house team as they may have other work commitments at other clients or projects.
- High Turnover: This is because augmented team members may have the tendency to move out of the project or even from the organization all together in search of other opportunities or contracts which in essence will create a challenge for the project by pulling out already experienced workers with a lot of knowledge about the organization.
- Misalignment of Incentives: The remuneration system, promotion possibilities, and KPI of the members of the augmented team may be rather weakly connected to the project performance compared to in-house staff.
- Lack of Emotional Investment: The augmented team members may not be as emotionally invested for the organization and projects as the existing team members due to lack of a strong sense of belonging to the organization resulting in lack of commitment to the project outcomes.
How to ensure full commitment from your augmented teams:
To address these challenges and foster greater commitment from the augmented team, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Clearly Communicate the Project’s Importance: It is important that the augmented team recognizes the strategic importance of the project as well as how the work to be performed will benefit the organization. Let them show you why it must be done a certain way.
- Include Them in Key Decision-Making: Involve the augmented team members in project related decisions and project planning. Ask for their input and feedback and make it a point that their opinions are important.
- Create a Sense of Ownership: Encourage the members of the augmented team to take more personal interest in the success of the project, also increase the level of control they have on the work being done. Why not encourage them to make and resolve problem areas on their own time.
- Recognize and Reward Contributions: Employ a recognition programme in recognition of the augmented team in relation to the project. Such rewards can be in the form of financial incentives, recognition in public forums or meetings or in the form of a chance to attend further education programs.
- Facilitate Team Integration: The augmented team should be included in the organization’s culture, social activities, and other such functions, so that they are perceived to be a part of the larger entity.
- Provide Opportunities for Growth: Provide the augmented team members with challenges that would enhance skill, career progression as well as roles within the project. It can create some sense of ownership in the success of the organization hence promoting its prosperity.
- Establish Clear Communication and Feedback Channels: Make the communication with the in-house employees and augmented workforce as frequent and transparent as possible and always give feedback and appreciation to the members of the augmented team.
- Consider Longer-Term Engagements: As much as possible, engage the augmented team through longer terms contracts and retainer basis rather than through short term and project-to-project basis. They may also help to develop a greater sense of commitment and organizational continuity.
By acquiring these strategies, organizations ensure that the augmented team members feel more ownership, be loyal and emotionally committed by increasing the engagement, thus decreasing the turnover and becoming more committed to the objectives of the project.
10. Onboarding and Training Delays
→Delays in bringing augmented team members up to speed on the project:
A third vice that organizations are likely to encounter in operationalization of an augmented software team is the training of the new members of the team. One of the biggest challenges when implementing the augmented team is to integrate them in a way that they know what they need to know, and the context that they need to work within.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Incomplete Documentation: The employees themselves know more that is not in documents, about the project, code, processes, and organizational environment they are in. This makes it also hard to hire new employees into the team and bring them through an orientation process.
- Lack of Dedicated Onboarding Sessions: There are many things that may be formally or informally discussed during onboarding sessions and training, and if there is no special time for them, such details might be easily lost. The in-house team may not notice the new members’ presence, much less take time to impart their knowledge to them.
- Differences in Domain Expertise: It may also be that the augmented team members are technically competent, but this does not mean that they are well-acquainted with the sector or sub-sector of the project. Closing such a knowledge gap requires time and effort.
- Geographical and Cultural Barriers: In case the augmented team is dispersed, it results in a scenario whereby it is difficult to ensure that interpersonal dynamics that fuel onboarding as well as knowledge sharing are optimized.
- Archived Information: Information and knowledge about relevant projects may be stored in the various areas of the in-house team; thus it may be challenging for the augmented team to fetch relevant information within the stipulated time.
How to mitigate onboarding and training delays for the augmented teams:
To overcome these onboarding and training delays, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Create a Streamlined Onboarding Process: Usually, one should create a clear set of actions showing how the augmented team members would be integrated into the team as fast as possible. It should contain time-tables, checklists and roles and responsibilities.
- Hold Dedicated Onboarding Sessions: Cart out for periodic and or special sessions where the in-house team can teach the new knowledge, context and practices to the augmented team. These sessions should be very planned so that most of the information is passed from the facilitators to the participants.
- Provide Onboarding Training Modules: Develop training acts and guides that the employees can use while going at their own pace as they learn the important information about the project, the processes it will entail, and the technical aspects of it. Ensure that the above stated resources can be readily made available to the augmented team members.
- Offer Hands-On Training Opportunities: Provide the augmented team opportunities to be around the in-house experts more or teach them through allowing them to follow around on the job or from actual on-job training. This enables them to have first hand experiences and this gives them context.
- Foster Collaboration and Mentorship: Promote collaboration and interaction within the in-house staff and the staff from the augmented team. Ensure the new team members have assigned coaches who will be ensuring that they are assisted throughout the whole process.
- Incentivize Knowledge Sharing: Value and appreciate the contributions of the internal team while they are engaging with the new employees of augmented reality. It increases the sharing of knowledge.
- Leverage Knowledge Management Tools: Ensure the under/utilization of knowledge management platforms and enhancement of collaboration tools that make it easier for the augmented team to access information that they need and interaction with the in-house expertise.
By maintaining these strategies, organizations can afford the project an efficient onboarding process whereby the augmented team members can quickly come on board and support the success of the project.
11. Lack of Cultural Alignment
→Different work cultures, attitudes, and practices may cause friction:
Among the issues that may arise when working with an augmented software team include conflict in work culture, belief system as well as work practices. There could be some differences in work ethic, attitude, and organizational practices between the internal and the augmented software team. Such cultural differences can cause conflict, misunderstanding and inefficiency provided there is no proper management.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Conflicting Communication Styles: This may also create differences in the manner in which the in-house team and the augmented team communicate including the formality, the frequency of check-in and the communication media used.
- Divergent Approaches to Problem-Solving: The teams may have a different approach to problem detection and problem solving where the in-house team has their preferred steps and the augmented team may have other procedures.
- Differing Attitudes Towards Work: This may lead to the formation of different perceptions of work and employment amongst the different teams leading to conflict such as perceived difference in work-life balance, working hours and work ethic.
- Clashing Organizational Hierarchies: The in-house and augmented teams may have different decision-making framework and authority, hence leading to misunderstandings and unnecessary time wastages.
- Lack of Shared Values and Goals: The teams might end up pulling in different directions due to lack of unified goal and direction of the firm.
How to balance cultural alignment issues with augmented teams:
To foster cultural alignment between the in-house and augmented software teams, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Establish Shared Values and Goals: Develop, articulate, communicate and gain commitment to the organization’s goals, vision and strategy by both the internal and outsourced team. Challenge the teams to make project specific goals which support the above consisting values.
- Facilitate Team-Building Exercises: Arrange informal online or scheduled offline meetings and/or entertainment that can facilitate better relationships between the in-house and augmented teams and help everybody feel like a team. Not only can some of these activities write off the cultural differences, but also build the teamwork culture altogether.
- Align on Communication Norms: Provide specific rules of how the teams should interact, which channels should be used, how often the teams should meet and what kind of response time expected from the team. It is advisable to engage the teams to consult on these norms and come up with a consensus on them.
- Encourage Cross-Cultural Understanding: Organize seminars and training to be conducted by cross cultural specialists, with a view of making both teams understand, respect and tolerate the conducts of the other team. That is because when people are addressed in their preferred style, this can foster understanding and minimize misunderstandings that are likely to take place if one is using the wrong communication style.
- Empower Collaborative Problem-Solving: Incase of the occurrence of these problems, involve both the in house team and the augmented team so that they come up with the best solutions. This approach of working in collaboration can assist the teams address the fact that everyone has different methodologies of tackling problems.
- Recognize and Celebrate Diversity: Recognize and appreciate the contribution that the new entrants to the team are likely to offer to the team based on their backgrounds. Remind the teams that it is okay to learn from each other and exploit some of the diversities to improve on the project.
- Lead by Example: Leaders of the organization have a particular role of displaying appropriate cultural beliefs that should apply to the in-house and the augmented team of workers.
These techniques, therefore, help organizations to enhance cultural fit, enhance communication and cooperation, and hence produce an efficient software development workforce.
13. Dependency on Third-Party Vendors
→Over-reliance on external teams can lead to dependencies and reduced control over projects:
When a number of organizations heavily depend on the augmented software teams from the third-party vendors, there is tendency to be overly reliant on outside resources. This dependency can cause a number of problems and issues that have to be addressed and avoided in some cases.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Reduced Control and Flexibility: Outsourcing, which is the procurement of services from outside providers who specialize in a variety of segments of the Software Development Life Cycle, means that the organization no longer has complete control over the project. This may make it less easy to change and develop on time, get new requirements or solve some problems.
- Vendor Lock-In: Gradually the organization may end up having to over-reliant with a particular vendor and it may be hard to change or to rein Source internally. This results in vendor lock-in, which hampers the bargaining power of the organization and restricts its choices.
- Intellectual Property (IP) Concerns: There are certain forms of knowledge that the organization may require to share with the third-party vendor in order to facilitate their task such as: Intellectual Property, trade secrets and proprietary information. This in turn increases the rate of theft or misuse of the IP.
- Inconsistent Quality and Performance: One can also argue that the third-party vendor may not provide quality work that the organization wants, and they may sometimes produce work that is below par or take a long time to complete the work hence narrowing down the overall results.
- Lack of Transparency: There might be problems with transparency since the organization is unable to monitor the internal affairs and internal staff of the vendor organization.
- Business Continuity Risks: In case of strained financial status or operational problems and other issues with the third-party vendor, a direct threat to the effectiveness of own projects and even business continuity appears.
- Increased Coordination Overhead: This task of managing the relationship and communicating with the third-party vendor can cause a lot of overhead & complexity in terms of managing and governing an organization’s projects.
How to reduce dependency on third-party vendors:
To mitigate the risks and challenges associated with over-reliance on third-party vendors, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Diversify Vendor Relationships: This should be done by developing relations with more third-party providers so that there is no overly reliance on a single vendor. This means that the organization will be able to negotiate more effectively with the vendors if there is a conflict of some sort with the particular vendor in question.
- Develop In-House Redundancy: Organization should also invest on applications and tightly control and develop in-house resources in utilizing third-party software and system developers in all hardline organizational operational tasks and functions. This can help in case a vendor is incapable of performing as was agreed upon and needs an alternative plan.
- Establish Clear Governance and Oversight: The following measures should be taken to ensure sound governance: KPI and SLA with the third-party vendors should be reviewed as often as possible, audits, and other procedures should be conducted on a regular basis. This will assist the organization keep tabs and monitor work that is outsourced to service providers from outside the organization.
- Prioritize Intellectual Property (IP) Protection: Make sure that the organization IP is well protected by having proper legal clauses in the contracts, non-disclosure provisions, and the security of the vendor’s systems, and their policies.
- Plan for Vendor Transition: Prepare switch and relocation plans in case the work needs to transfer from one vendor to another or vice versa, in case it is more beneficial for the organization. This may range from updating procedure manuals, knowledge preservation, and check Point testing of the transition plan.
- Foster Collaborative Relationships: Building excellent communication and cooperation with the third-party vendors and making them also bear responsibility in the course of the project’s development.
- Continuously Assess and Optimize: Follow up the organization’s vendor management, its performance and overall reliance on external teams and services periodical. Modify accordingly in order to retune outsourcing and internal capacity, to ensure key activities have sufficient duplication and contingency plans.
By applying these strategies, organizations can enjoy the advantages of outsourcing software teams with the possibility to avoid the consequences of a complete dependence on third-party contractors. This will enhance the ability of the organization to exercise more control and versatility on its software development projects by diversifying on vendors and coming up with in-house back-up plans.
14. Unclear Project Scope
→Undefined or frequently changing project scope can lead to confusion and delays:
Another problem that can be encountered when using an augmented software team is the question of how to define the project’s scope. Lack of scope clarity or frequent changes in the project scope results in confusion, miscommunication and in time delay in the development process of the software.
Some of the key problems that can arise include:
- Misaligned Expectations: The main problem is that the direct team and the augmented team may have different expectations about what needs to be delivered, when it has to be delivered, and for what reason. This may cause the emergence of conflicts or disappointments “I imagine that it creates conflicts or disappointments because people have different perceptions on matters,” explains Rotich.
- Scope Creep: Lack of definition of the project scope is a major weakness because it is easier for the scope to expand with unknown new features, requirements, or tasks to become the new normal. This may overload the team and may lead to abandonment of the project.
- Inefficient Resource Allocation: When the scope of the project is not well defined it is very difficult to gauge the abilities, resources and time that are needed to achieve the goal. This can lead to the wrong distribution of the human resource that is within the team and the right distribution of the funds.
- Communication Breakdowns: This may result in instances when the in-house team and the augmented ones do not share the same perceptions of what the project requires and entails.
- Delays and Missed Deadlines: Substantial variations in project scope can interfere with the team dynamics and delivery of the project milestones on the right time; therefore, harm the success of a project.
- Decreased Quality: When the project is not well scoped there is tendency of the team to deliver sub-optimal products to the clients or organization which may result in quality problems and repetition of the same work.
How to ensure a clear project scope:
To overcome the challenges occur due to unclear or frequently changing project scope, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Establish a Detailed Project Scope: It is important to take time and establish goals that are clear as well as specific activities, work packages that need to be delivered, timescales and methods of measuring success. Ensure that both the in-house and augmented teams are involved in this scoping process so that all the parties can recognize the anticipated goals.
- Implement Robust Change Management Procedures: It is advisable to have protocols within a project that addresses the question of handling a change of the scope in the event that it has to be adjusted. The following issues should be incorporated; This should include a formal method of controlling and implementing changes to minimize the problem of scope creep.
- Conduct Regular Review and Refinement: One must set some common frequency of review to evaluate the updated project scope and recognize the variations and remedial changes. This will enable the team to work on the project goals in a coordinated manner, meet new demands that may crop up in the processing of the project while at the same time not transgressing the scope of work that has been agreed to be done.
- Clearly Communicate Scope to All Stakeholders: Make sure that the project scope that has been defined, as well at any changes that have been signed off by the management are communicated to the respective stakeholders, the in-house team as well as the augmented team from the other organizations, or any other representatives from the client or the management. This will help ensure that this process is transparent so as to ensure accountability.
- Leverage Agile Methodologies: Think about deploying the methods, which are oriented to the flexibility, such as Scrum or Kanban, that allow adapting to the change in scope and requirements. These approaches may assist the team to be in a position to deal with changes in scope in the correct manner with the right scope of the project defined and achievable.
- Establish Contingency Plans: Make contingency plans and plans for pandemics based on possible changes in scope or deviation in requirements, resources, schedules etc. or even critical features. This will ensure that the team remains ahead and avoids situations that may be considered as a concern in regard to the scope.
- Encourage Proactive Scope Management: Ensuring that both the in-house and the augmented teams be actively vigilant for potential scope concerns or risks and together ensure that; Everyone owns the problem of scope; That the team avoids scope creep.
This way various organizational strategies can be maintained, and the exact project’s scope by the agreed and well-understood goals and objectives together with enhanced change management systems can be effectively developed. This will help the in-house and augmented teams to align towards attaining one unified goal for the project and contribute to reduced cases of scope creep and therefore improving the overall success of the project.
15. Skill Gaps
→Augmented teams may lack certain skills or expertise required for specific tasks:
One of the potential issues, while using an augmented software team might be the issue of ‘skills mismatch’ that refers to a situation where the members of an augmented team might not possess specific skill or might not be a domain expert in areas that require a certain skill set specifically for the project tasks. This can lead to creation of bottlenecks which in effect slows down the efficiency and effectiveness of the software development processes.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Lack of Specialized Technical Skills: The augmented team members may not have the high-end or specialized technical expertise that may be needed to accomplish some of the specialized coding work, the choice of architecture or integration into existing frameworks. Such can be time consuming and require possibly extra effort and development by either the in-house team or more training for the contractor.
- Insufficient Domain Knowledge: Thus, the augmented team may have overall high competence in software development, but may not necessarily know the client’s field, its processes, or the area the project is focused on. This often complicates the efforts that the students place towards the understanding of the course conditions and achievement of the best results.
- Gaps in Soft Skills: The augmented team members may not necessarily possess some of the presenting soft skills as well as project management skills. This can reduce their capacity to integrate with the internal staff and other stakeholders.
- Inability to Adapt to New Technologies: Application development is a dynamic industry and the augmented team may possibly find it difficult to integrate new tools, frameworks or methods as and when they are incorporated into the project life cycle. This can result in production delays and compel the employee to undergo further training.
- Lack of Institutional Knowledge: The augmented team may also lack the type of knowledge and information that in-house team has related to the history and organization of the firm. This sometimes can prove difficult in that their ability to offer accurate recommendations and the right solutions is affected.
How to address to the skill gaps in the augmented teams:
To address the skill gap challenges that can arise when working with an augmented software team, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Conduct Thorough Assessments: Ensure that before proceeding with working with the augmented team members there is a comparison made between the skills and experience of the team members and what is required from the project. This will in turn assist the organization in formulating strategies about the formation of the team as well as allocation of resources.
- Provide Targeted Training: Ensure that the team members already in existence are provided with training & up-skill programs so as to acquire the specialized skill set, domain expertise or interpersonal skills needed for the project. This can include the availability of practical sessions, coaching or linkages to resources such as learning material online.
- Leverage In-House Expertise: Ensure that the in-house and augmented staff are in a position to work closely so that the new staff can obtain an organizational experience to provide adequate information to the organization.
- Implement Knowledge-Sharing Practices: Promote sound Knowledge Sharing practices; including sharing meetings or sessions, documentation and particularly ready access to stored Knowledge. It will also help the augmented team members, some of whom may be new to this area to get up to speed and close any knowledge gap.
- Consider Hybrid Staffing Models: Discover a model with the local augmented team consisting of employees who work mainly in-house and handle more specific and essential tasks, and an augmented team recruited through contractors or partners who frequently perform less complicated tasks or can quickly scale them. It can assist to close the needed function gaps as well as exploit the merits of team augmentation.
- Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning: Protect the commercial intellectual property of every member of the combined team, as well as enable the in-house staff as well as the augmented workers to enhance their skills to be able to accommodate the latest technologies or methods.
This way, the labor skills of the team members are evaluated on time before hiring the augmented members, therefore, effective training can be offered or specialists hired to supplement the combined team’s expertise to effectively offer quality, efficient and innovative solutions in line with the needs of the project.
16. Legal and Compliance Issues
→Compliance with local regulations, contracts, or labor laws when outsourcing:
Any organization that decides to engage an augmented software team quickly encounters numerous legal and compliance issues, local and international. Compliance with the regulations, contractual terms and labor laws when outsourcing the software development tasks are often taxing endeavors for any organization.
Some of the key issues that organizations may face include:
- Data Privacy and Security Regulations: Depending on the specific field of the augmented team and the region it operates in there are certain regulations regarding data protection and information security that have to be adhered such as GDPR or HIPAA. Noncompliance of these standards and codes will attract legal consequences such as fines and legal consequences.
- Intellectual Property (IP) Protection: The organization must also prove that the augmented team members are not allowed to expose the corporate secret, data or information of the organization to the public. This is usually done through strict Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and well stated contractual provisions.
- Labor and Employment Laws: Hence, it becomes important for an organization to obey local labor laws and employment regulations of the country or area where the external team is located. This may cover things such as wage protections like minimum wage and working hours; benefits and everything to do with dismissal.
- Tax and Regulatory Compliance: In fact, in relation to the geographical location of the augmented team the Organization may be exposed to tax liabilities, social security or other legal responsibilities, with which the Organization has to be in compliance otherwise may face either penalties or legal consequences.
- Contractual Obligations: The organization must also realize that as it relates to the team that has been augmented or the third-party vendor supplying this team, the terms of the contract defines what each party can and cannot do according to the counterparty contract that the organization has with the clients or stakeholders that it serves/classes that it instructs.
- Liability and Risk Management: When dealing with an external team, this comes with extra liability risk such as exposure to the organization data, failure in any project given or any other mishap that can ruin the organization reputation or make it lose lots of money.
How to mitigate legal and compliance issues while working with augmented teams:
To mitigate the legal and compliance challenges when working with an augmented software team, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Conduct Due Diligence: Due diligence must be conducted on the augmented team members and or third party service providers to validate compliance to the laws and regulations.
- Establish Robust Contracts: Collaborate with legal departments to ensure that contracts are as detailed as possible in describing deliverables, ownership of created material, data protection provisions, and legal and regulatory considerations. Make sure all supplied/signed contracts meet the local labor laws and the laws of the intellectual property.
- Implement Compliance Monitoring: Introduce ways by which it will be possible to evaluate the performance of the augmented team in compliance with the contractual obligations, data protection provisions, and other legislation. This may cover auditing, security reviews or Weekly/ monthly or yearly reports or any other reports as deemed necessary by the management.
- Provide Compliance Training: Inform both in-house and augmented employees involved in the project to develop awareness of legal and compliance standards and what may be done as well as possible implications for non-compliance.
- Maintain Transparency and Communication: Cultivate the effective and clear reporting of the compliance risks or occurrences by the augmented team to the organization’s management..
- Develop Contingency Plans: Develop backup strategies and disaster response procedures in case of any legal or compliance-related crises including leakage of data and compliance probes that can negatively affect the organization.
Through seeking advice from lawyers and the right review of contracts being signed, one can be in a position to avoid legal and compliance issues which are associated with outsourcing software development to an augmented team. This proactive action will reduce the possibility of failing to meet the requirements of the laws and regulations, getting into potential legal troubles or incurring hefty fines involving; copyrights, trademarks and patents of the organizations products.
17. Cost Management
→Unexpected costs associated with managing and maintaining augmented teams:
Another is if you are working with an augmented software team, you get exposed to other additional costs that may arise. This can put pressure on how one is going to balance costs and price when it comes to the management of resources. Some of the key issues to watch out for include:Some of the key issues to watch out for include:
- Hidden Fees: Sometimes the outsourced team has other charges or fees which were not stated initially in the contract or agreement. Expenses such as office supplies, informing tools or traveling expenses can be greatly summed.
- Onboarding and Training Costs: While hiring new members to a team means that they will require orientation that will in turn use time and other resources. This will include such activities as training your staff, giving them access to the systems you are implementing and time needed to get the systems incorporated into your business operations.
- Coordination and Management Overhead: The most challenging aspect of working in the augmented team framework is the management of the said relationship. Communication through meetings, status check-ins and problem solving takes up a lot of time from your team.
- Technology and Infrastructure Costs: The augmented team may require some access to your company’s software, hardware, cloud services and many others. This technology therefore means an added cost in the provision and maintenance of the same.
- Productivity Losses: Scheduling is another major challenge associated with an augmented team; if the members do not move as expected or there is a communication gap, that will mean redoing some sections of the project, therefore, adjusting the project calendar or budget.
- Turnover and Replacement Costs: An untimely turnover in members of the augmented team may profit time as well as funds to search for as well as hire relevant talent.
How to effectively handle the cost management issues while working with augmented teams:
To manage the costs of an augmented software team, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Set Clear Budget Expectations: Make a clear financial plan when it comes into contact with an outsourcing partner. Ensure that all the possible cost estimating factors including the hourly rates, administration charges and technological costs are all considered. Always agree on the best price possible and make sure that you write everything down in black and white and do not enter into any agreement that is prejudiced by vague language or hidden charges.
- Monitor Expenses Regularly: The last factor which should be controlled is the budget, particularly concerning the expenses of the augmented team. Limit the work done, the number of tools taken, traveling and other costs need to be kept in check. Divide the budget as a percentage of estimated revenue in order to have a clue how these operations compare to the initial expectations. Shift your focus to contain costs if you find that they are increasing and this can be done with a lot of ease.
- Use Performance-Based Contracts: Organize the terms of the contract in such a manner that the augmented team is offered an incentive to perform better than the KPIs that have been set. Make sure their self interest is your self interest as well so you are not paying to develop areas you do not wish to cover. To write this text I will use a base rate with incentives attained in the agreed targets, timeframe and cost control.
By taking these proactive steps, you can:
- Give the right direction regarding cost implications
- Keep expenditure well-regulated
- Coordinate the engagement in such a way that enhances the flow of the process and productivity.
- Avoid the changes and guarantee that none of the risks exert pressure on the financial requirements of the software project.
18. Maintaining Team Morale
→Remote or external team members may feel disconnected, leading to lower morale:
It is always a challenge to keep the morale of an augmented software team, especially those who are working remotely or are hired from outside. In this regard, such team members tend to work independently, thus may not necessarily feel like they are part of the large team family and this may demotivate them.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Lack of Social Interaction: This means that remote workers do not get a chance to have a regular exchange of informal communication and interpersonal interaction common when people work in close quarters.
- Unclear Communication: One has to work under limited conditions when it comes to using communication gadgets since it becomes quite difficult to decipher the body language of the people that you are communicating with. This could lead to misunderstandings and feeling of being out of the loop With this in mind the role of the CIO can be defined as follows:
- Fewer Growth Opportunities: Working remotely may entail less opportunity to work on promotions, career advancements, or an opportunity to learn and advance on a professional level more than the in-house staff.
- Reduced Sense of Belonging: When the employees are working remotely they may not feel like they are a part of the team or the company and therefore may not feel as committed as is required to ensure the success of the project.
- Burnout and Fatigue: Such effort to remain connected and involved can cause ‘burnout’ within the team if they are spread across different phases of time.
How to successfully maintain team morale while working with augmented teams:
To counteract the morale challenges when working with remote or external augmented software team members, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Regularly Celebrate Milestones: It is crucial to ensure that all project progress and successes and goals and achievements are communicated to the whole in-house and remote team. This can be in the form of virtual celebrations, sending messages of accomplishment and complimenting excellent performance. Receiving some reward for success, whether large or small, also assists the remote workers to feel like they are contributing toward the accomplishment of the team’s goals.
- Engage in Team-Building Activities: Schedule and organize group online meetings in order to strengthen teamwork in a remote setup and with the contract employees. This could include things such as quizzes, group fitness activities or exercises, virtual social gatherings such as cocktail parties and/or gaming sessions. Such calls offer chances to do casual interacting and assist employees to feel part of the larger bench of individuals in the organization
- Provide Recognition and Feedback: Encourage use of a formal recognition program which will involve appreciation to the team from a distance performers. This could be things like employee of the month awards, spot bonuses or even a simple Thank you note from the management. Further, give feedback and chances to improve themselves and progress at work for the distant personnel to understand that their promotion is appreciated.
Hiring remote and external workers also requires strategies like the above to ensure morale and engagement of the augmented software team is well maintained. Quite basically, commemoration, the fostering of camaraderie, and meaningful reward from time to time will play a major role in motivating the entire team with interest in the project.
19. Delays in Delivery
→Augmented teams may cause delays due to miscommunication or misalignment of priorities:
Some of the most common issues arise from working with an augmented software team to cause a delay in project delivery in organizations. Such delays have often been attributed to sometime communication and coordination breakdown between the in-house and external employees.
Some of the key problems that can arise include:
- Miscommunication of Requirements: In case the project requirements and specifications, timelines and priorities are not well conveyed to the augmented team, the team may be shifted into doing wrong tasks or deliver wrong works that are not desirable by the organization. This can result in wastage of time and some potential problems having to be solved more than once.
- Lack of Alignment on Priorities: The in-house team and the augmented team may not necessarily agree which tasks or features to focus on first. In the absence of the same perspective on critical schedules, the teams are likely to have conflicting interests, hence holding the project back.
- Difficulty Coordinating Workflows: This makes the coordination of work and integration of the team, the in-house team and the augmented team when the team is distributed becomes challenging. This may lead to congestion and hence delays.
- Inadequate Status Reporting: Unless the augmented team shares timely status reports as well as challenges they encounter during the project implementation, in-house team may not be in a position to detect and correct troubles on time.
- Limited Visibility into the Process: The regular in-house team might have scanty knowledge of the augmented team’s daily operations to diagnose the time consumption issues that may hinder the general project time.
- Lack of Accountability: Lack of responsibility for deliverable work and definitive ownership often makes the augmented team members less inclined towards meeting time deadlines thus causing delays.
How to effectively handle the delays with deliveries while working with an augmented team:
Some of the considerations that are likely to help in avoiding delays when working with an augmented software team include; The use of agile development that uses frequent sprints and deadline Embedded timelines Of course, this approach can really help to maintain certain pace and have greater control over the correspondence between the in-house and augmented teams.
- Adopt an Agile Methodology: Think about implementing an agile software development methodology – it is especially useful in today’s market and employs such practices as frequent delivery and iterative development. These methodologies effectively apply in distributed settings because they foster a high-degree of transparency, flexibility, and adaptability to change of requirements.
- Establish Regular Sprint Cycles: Divide the work into several short cycles usually that take from 1 to 4 weeks. The above cadence of the delivery cycle that is consistent and predictable will assist the augmented team to remain focused and measured against the priorities of the in-house team.
- Define Clear Sprint Goals and Deadlines: Before the start of each sprint, jointly with the augmented team, identify a set number of targets, outputs, and timeframes for the forthcoming sprint. The fact is that having a clear understanding of what goals should be achieved during a sprint can also minimize conflicts and avoid the situation when all the participants of the work are trying to reach different goals.
- Conduct Daily Standups and Sprint Reviews: Cultivate daily brief meetings and frequency of sprint review meetings to address issues of communications and to help the readers understand that the augmented team is actively achieving the goals set out for the sprint.
- Emphasize Transparency and Visibility: Choose available software solutions that give real-time information on team’s activity and progress like Kanban or burndown chart. From a transparency standpoint, this greatly assists the in-house team to notice any delay or problem with the progress before affecting the overall big picture project timeline.
- Encourage Continuous Improvement: Maximize use of reflection at the end of the sprints to allow for mapping of what went well, what needs to be improved on and how the in-house and augmented teams could collaborate better.
In this case, by embracing the agile approach to development, the organization can set up a structured process in the form of an iteration that fosters improved communication, and coordination between the in-house and augmented workers. This can help reduce the chances of delay on the project and do away with chances of the distributed team project getting off track.
20. Lack of Innovation
→Augmented teams may focus only on tasks assigned without contributing innovative ideas:
When operating with the augmented software team, organizations may experience the problem of receiving low innovation from members of the external team. Vis à vis simple teams, augmented teams have a tendency of developing new ideas or seeking new approaches that could be of great benefits to the project in general since they are oriented towards offering the specific task that has been assigned to them.
Some of the key issues that can arise include:
- Narrow Scope of Contribution: Augmented team members may not go the extra mile in meeting the tasks that are expected of them, instead of that, they may only do what is required of them and no more.
- Lack of Ownership and Empowerment: Lack of empowerment or ownership may mean that the augmented members of the team do not exercise or even attempt to do more than what the main deliverables of the project were set out to be.
- Unfamiliarity with the Organization: The augmented team can be made of members or consultants from outside the organization and they might not be fully aware of the company vision, values and strategic direction which resourcefully prompts innovative thinking.
- Misalignment of Incentives: The remuneration and measurements of performance of the new team may not encourage the idea generation and implementation, thus the team will just aim at meeting the established objectives.
- Communication Barriers: Some of these include bridging communication and/or cooperation gaps between the in-house extraordinary technical experts and the augmenting creative professionals in an organization.
- Risk-Averse Mindset: Regular team members may be too scared to come up with and suggest different exciting ideas to the management for the augmentation of the project because such change may lead to loss of their jobs or alter their perception in the eyes of the management.
How to ensure innovative outputs from the augmented teams:
To address the challenge of a lack of innovation from the augmented software team, organizations should consider the following strategies:
- Foster a Culture of Innovation: Make the company culture one that fosters innovation and creativity to seek new solutions to the problems and explore innovative solutions. Make sure that everybody supports this culture, especially the augmented workforce and the in-house team.
- Provide Opportunities for Collaborative Ideation: Develop separate channels where in-house employees and augmented workers will collaborate on introducing original ideas to the business, for example, through brainstorming. These collaborative sessions will be useful in cross pollination of ideas and may come up with new ways of doing things.
- Empower the Augmented Team: Let the augmented team members feel that the dominion belongs to them which will let them search for the inefficiency and offer innovative solutions to it. Let them express anything that comes to their head including things that they have not been requested to do at work.
- Align Incentives with Innovation: Rewrite the compensation and performance evaluation of the augmented team for incentivizing innovative inputs and not merely the accomplishment of work. This will make them look for ways of making things work which will include going an extra mile in order to make things work.
- Facilitate Knowledge Sharing: Cross-training of the new members of the augmented team, organization of many-shooted mentorship and other information-sharing practices to ensure that those additional employees understand the context in which the organization is operating, the cases and types of the problems, and the strategies set for its success. The expectation is that having this contextual knowledge can spur the conceptualization of the next, more radical idea.
- Create Space for Continuous Improvement: Provide the augmented team with frequent structured feedback and check-in points by which expressing ideas for enhancements and updating existing operational methods could be seamlessly executed. Show that to them the input is welcome and can result in actual changes being implemented.
- Embrace Diversity of Thought: Create the two cultures which allow the in-house team and the augmented team to share ideas and ultimately use their differences to foster the generation of new ideas. Appreciate the diversity that the new team members are about to bring in the team through their additions.
Through these measures, organizational members are encouraged to embrace the innovation culture, and even more so the augmented software team members are encouraged to offer more than is expected of them. In the best case scenario they ensure that both the social and the augmented team not only contribute their different perspectives during the ideation process, but also gain a voice in the decision-making process allowing for the innovation of the new team to be vested in the augmented team’s success.
How Craftsmen Has Overcome Global Challenges in Software Team Augmentation
With over two decades of experience in the industry, Craftsmen Software has successfully navigated and mitigated the many global challenges associated with software team augmentation. Our team consists of 85+ talented professional engineers, each equipped with deep knowledge and expertise in software development, cloud solutions, and IT services. These highly skilled professionals, combined with our hardworking and dedicated teams, have allowed us to deliver seamless services to clients around the world, despite regional and operational challenges.
By adopting Scandinavian work culture, which emphasizes transparency, punctuality, and quality, we have fostered strong, long-term relationships with our clients, boasting a zero percent client churn rate. This professionalism and commitment to excellence have helped us overcome issues like time zone differences, communication barriers, and team integration problems. Whether working with clients from Europe, the UK, or other regions, Craftsmen has always managed to provide tailored, efficient solutions that meet and exceed client expectations.
Our approach is simple yet effective: we emphasize clear communication, streamline processes, and use collaboration tools to ensure smooth integration between our teams and those of our clients. This dedication, paired with over 20 years of experience, has positioned us as a trusted partner in software team augmentation, offering the expertise needed to tackle any obstacle in a rapidly evolving global market.
By combining our technical prowess with a deep understanding of client needs, we’ve continued to thrive, no matter the challenge. Craftsmen Software is the partner you need to overcome the obstacles associated with team augmentation, leveraging our expertise to help your business scale successfully.