Staff augmentation and managed IT services are two popular delivery approaches often employed by firms to meet the challenges of staffing up for a software development project, or when outsourcing essential but non-critical IT tasks to supplemental staff rather than hiring additional in-house employees.

As the average rates for offshore engineers have increased substantially in traditional offshore hubs like India and China, domestic outsourcing, also known as onshore IT outsourcing, has been rapidly increasing in popularity. Domestic outsourcing also offers many advantages offshoring doesn’t, which is another reason why onshore staff augmentation is becoming more viable — and for certain kinds of projects — the most effective outsourcing model for US-based companies to adopt.

The appeal, and necessity, for businesses to build and work with distributed teams is on the rise, and all indications are that this remote working trend will continue to grow. Here are 4 essential steps to recruiting augmented staff, building distributed teams, and successfully managing those teams over time.

The competitive environment technology companies operate in on a daily basis can make it a challenge to acquire the additional technical staff that is often needed to deliver a complex project or ship a software product on time. And when it comes to hiring, a wide range of issues can quickly surface as organizations try to attract increasingly scarce technical talent on a temporary or permanent basis, which is why the tech industry needs all of the staffing help it can get.