Alexis
Hi everyone. Welcome to Talk Tech with Data Dave. I am Alexis, your host of this podcast, and today, I am not here with Data Dave because this is another Talk Tech Summer Takeover series episode. Today, I am here with the big boss, Data Dave’s partner, Preston Gregg, to answer a listener question.
Preston, super happy to have you with us today. You have been with us on the podcast before, so I think our listeners know you, but it’s worth introducing yourself again in case somebody didn’t listen to that episode.
So, welcome to the Talk Tech Summer Takeover series. In case this is your first Talk Tech with us, we are giving Data Dave a little bit of time this summer to rest, relax, and frankly do his real job instead of just podcast with me. So, we’re bringing in some experts to chat with me and to talk through a couple of different topics.
So, hey Preston, welcome again to the podcast.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, why you started D3Clarity, whatever you want to talk about, and then we’ll dive right into the question.
Preston Gregg
Great. Good morning.
Hi Alexis. Thanks for having me here.
I’m Preston Gregg. I’m the General Manager for D3Clarity, and I’ve been really in the enterprise software delivering/ complex IT solutions most of my career, going on 25 years and seen it all. Typically data focused and complex integration between systems and that sort of thing.
Yeah, we started D3Clarity really because we were working with so many clients, large and small, that were locked into legacy systems and other solutions that needed help. And we didn’t really like the way the big software vendors were doing it. So, we thought we could do better by stitching together the tools that clients already had and now using, you know, all these great cloud capabilities that give you different ways to solve problems. So, that’s a little bit about me. Glad to be here.
Alexis
Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s so funny that you just said they had these legacy applications. I just did a recording. And our last Takeover episode was with Patrick Walsh, and he was sharing a story about one of our clients who was running a legacy system that was so far out of date that there were not patches available for it whenever we first joined them. And then we were like, “Well, we can’t really keep your system secure because there’s nothing we can do because there’s nothing available for it. So it’s time to find something new.” It’s definitely something that I’m hearing over and over again. It’s definitely something that we do. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.
Today, we have a listener question. The question actually came to Data Dave, but I thought it would be a great question for you to answer as one of our kind of main salespeople, kind of one of our people who talks a lot about staff augmentation, because that’s the specific question.
Preston Gregg
Okay.
Alexis
I wanted you to kind of dive into this for me, maybe in two parts. So, I’m going to give you the question and then I’m going to stop for a second and loop back.
So, the question came from one of Dave’s followers on LinkedIn. His name is Ashok V, and Ashok, thank you so much for the question. It is, “What are your thoughts on staff augmentation as a strategy to address skill gaps and project demands?”
So, before we like super dive into that question, I want to stop and focus on the word staff augmentation. Because, before I came to D3Clarity, I’ve never heard that word before. And I came to D3Clarity as like, a 35 year old woman. So, never hearing that word before, I imagine there’s some listeners out there who don’t know what that means either.
So, I’d like to talk about what staff augmentation is and then try to answer the question a little bit. So, let’s start there. Tell me about staff augmentation.
Preston Gregg
Yeah, so it is kind of a weird word that doesn’t come up that much outside of IT conversations.
Alexis
Yeah.
Preston Gregg
Really, staff augmentation is nothing different than bringing in specialty skills to help you do a specific project or part of your job or the job that your IT team needs to do or your software product need to do.
Alexis
In the IT world is definitely where staff augmentation lives. But like you just said, hiring for skill gaps. Could you use staff augmentation anywhere?
Preston Gregg
Yeah, I mean, typically when I look at staff augmentation, it’s really a decision on do you want to hire or augment your existing team with an expert or do you want to build out that capability within your team?
And we can talk about reasons and strategies, but it’s really like- say you’re building a house and you’re the builder, not necessarily the homeowner. You’re the builder. And you’ve taken on this job to build out a house, you have the choice of, do I want to hire and build out the skills for the plumber and the electrician and everything else, or do I want to focus on project management and design and go hire specialists like an expert carpenter or an electrician or an engineer that can come in and do the structural engineering for the foundation? I probably don’t want to build all those capabilities in my own team. And I also probably don’t want to be responsible for the quality of that work for like, critical things. I want to get an expert that can do that.
Alexis
Who would have thought? My dad is an electrician by trade. I would have never thought that he’s been doing staff augmentation his entire life.
Yeah, yeah, because that’s exactly what happens. You know, somebody who’s doing a big job calls him up and says, “Hey, Ken, I need you to help me with this specific job.” Because they don’t carry the skills to do this specific job, and they don’t want to learn to do them. They don’t want to be responsible for doing them wrong. And they definitely don’t want to hire him on full time and pay him a full-time salary and pay him benefits. They’d rather just pay him to do the job and then be done with it.
Preston Gregg
That’s right. And he’s also invested heavily in all the certifications and everything that he needs. He probably has a big specialized insurance policy about the work. There’s code standards that need licensed, accredited resources. And so, when somebody hires him, they’re hiring him for his skill, but they’re also hiring him because he meets all the requirements that need to be met.
Alexis
Right.
And so if you take that and turn that into the IT world, I mean, the same thing applies, but to what you just said, certifications, insurance, that’s a very specific thing. Like, I guess I’m thinking about it now in the same things I just said, like, I don’t want to pay for someone full-time, I just want them to do the specific job. But like, we obviously do staff augmentation. That’s why I brought you in to talk about it. But like, if we mess something up that’s on our insurance, not on the client’s insurance. So that’s a really good reason to go for it.
Preston Gregg
So, it’s a balance. The way we look at it and the way we instruct our clients a lot of times is to take a hard look at the things that your IT products- the software that you run and your people -on what are the core competencies that are going to be critical for your organization? What are the parts that make you unique? And those are the areas that you really need to build out your own core competencies around.
And sometimes that may be custom code, sometimes it just may be a business process. But then there’s parts of that that you need to look at and say, “Does it make sense for me as a project leader or a solution owner to build out those skill sets on my team?” Everybody has a limit on what they can do.
So, really defining what are the critical things that you have to be experts at versus what are the critical things that you could really hire an expert that is focused in that area to really come in and augment your team to deliver. That’s how I look at it.
Alexis
Like, I hear you when you say it’s a balancing act there because, and I think you said it a little bit earlier, the idea that you could go too far with it, you could staff augment too far and then get to a place where your internal team doesn’t really know what they’re doing anymore. And then you end up with a place where you’re very, very reliant on the staff that you’ve hired out. But the flip side of that is you could end up over-staffing your internal team and end up with a whole lot of skills that you really don’t need. So,there’s a balancing act there, but it’s a good opportunity for everybody to consider when they’re building out projects and especially specialized skills.
I think that’s kind of the big picture there. If there’s something specific you’re looking for for a specific project – we said it earlier: an electrician, a plumber- in the IT world, that’s where that would come in.
Are there like specific things that are really, really common, or is it just something that happens all over in the IT consulting world?
Preston Gregg
There’s another way to look at it. The two common patterns are…
Say, you’re picking a new CRM system. You know, you’re replacing HubSpot with Salesforce.com or something like that, and you’re looking for partners to come in and help you do that. You can make the decision of, “Do I really want to own that implementation of that software system myself, or do I want to hire an organization that does these implementation all the timetTo come in and do to A to Z, design the solution and do the implementation for me?” Both require a lot of interaction with your team and the business stakeholders and that sort of thing. But it really comes down to, who’s going to own the project plan and project manage the work.
If I’m going to own that as the business owner or the IT leader, then I’m going to use staff augmentation to round out the parts of the team that we don’t have core competencies in as an organization. If I’m not going that route, and I’m going to hire an outside firm to run the implementation for me, then I own all the stakeholders, I own all the requirements, I own project management on our side. That’s going to be more around getting this outside team all the access they need, all the meeting scheduling, that sort of thing. But then they’re responsible for project managing it and delivering what they signed up to deliver.
Alexis
So, both sides of the coin could easily be part of the staff augmentation or could be staff auged, but probably not at the same time.
Preston Gregg
Yeah. Am I hiring somebody to do a solution for me or am I hiring somebody to come in and do parts of the solution that my team needs help with?
Alexis
Got you. So, the original question was like, what are your thoughts on it? And I think when Dave had originally responded to Ashok, he said something like, like “All day, every day.” Like just a, “It’s a good idea. Do it.” Because, you know, on LinkedIn we’re always trying to sell things because that’s what we do.
But I think a better answer here is it’s something that you have to consider in the specific situation, based on your specific needs in your specific situation. Which is maybe a cop-out answer, but it’s the truth.
Preston Gregg
It’s a tool in your tool belt. Right.
Alexis
There we go.
Preston Gregg
And you need to use it wisely. Just like you don’t use a hammer for everything in a construction project. It’s a tool. Right. And you have to use it effectively.
Alexis
That is a great analogy. I used to use that analogy with my resident assistants all the time. So, very good analogy.
It is a summer of shameless plugs. So, I’m going to give you an opportunity, Preston. We said it earlier. I’ve been kind of saying that staff augmentation is a service that we offer here at D3Clarity. Are there any specific areas that we tend to offer staff augmentation in? Is it kind of a “If we do it, we’ll staff aug for it!” situation? What do you want to share? This is your platform.
Shameless plug away.
Preston Gregg
Sure. And it varies.
Our preference is to come in and help you with the strategy and picking the right tools for the job. Then implementing the software, training your team, that sort of thing. That’s what we can do if you want it fast, and you want it efficient.
Not always the right choice though. If this is core capabilities that you need to build long term, then maybe you hire us to come in and help do the strategy, make sure that’s right. Do the stakeholder interviews to really get your blueprint set up, and then have our architects help you architect it to meet best practices, to really line up with what your stakeholder objectives are.
And then a lot of times what clients use it for is that architecture oversight and then maybe some specific security specialty – if you’re doing a project in AWS – to make sure that you have all that piece of set up, or maybe doing the DevOps part to be able to automate deployment between your dev environment and your QA environment and that sort of thing. To get those set up, and then their team does it and owns it. And maybe, we do the first iteration and then hand off to the team, they do it, and then they have us come in and do some oversight and help when help is needed.
Alexis
I love that you said “handoff” there. That’s something I keep seeing in the case studies that I’ve been working on lately, and it’s something I don’t always see in other people’s case studies. So, I want to highlight it here. That’s something that we are like really passionate about. When it’s time to hand it over. It’s our preference to take the time to say, “Let’s lay it out, let’s make sure that you know what you’re taking over. Let’s make sure that we’re passing everything that we’ve worked on over to you in a way that you can understand and you can work through.” And so those knowledge transfer moments are like, built into our SOWs. I know I’ve seen them in SOWs, I’ve written them into case studies. Like, that is truly part of our system when we’re doing these staff aug programs. So, I just want to highlight that as something that we do that’s maybe not as common.
Preston Gregg
Okay, yeah, that’s a good point. Because we don’t consider it a project success until the customer can take on all aspects of it that they want to take on.
We do often do production support and some assistance afterwards, but we don’t want to have to always be the expert on that solution. If we do our job right, our customers can be self-sufficient, and then they bring us on the next really hard thing that they want to do that’s strategic, and that’s how we get our repeat business. Not by having to stay involved on the same project always.
Alexis
Yeah. Not trying to be irreplaceable. The goal is to be replaced and then to want to be called back in.
Preston Gregg
That’s right.
Alexis
Yeah. I love that.
Well, Preston, I think that answered the question. Like I said earlier, it’s a balancing act. That’s the game that we’re going to play. Maybe not “all day, every day” although from a sales perspective, I still think that was a great answer for Dave to give them right off the bat. But yes, I think there’s definitely a balance there.
Thank you so much for coming on for this Summer Talk Tech Takeover series episode. I think you did a wonderful job answering that question.
Ashok, thank you for that question. It was awesome. I hope we answered it. If we didn’t answer it, reach out to us and let me know. Like tell me what we missed. Tell me what you’re still looking for. I’d love to dive back into this question. You can always reach out to us talktech@d3clarity.com. That is also a great place for anyone to submit questions to Data Dave or any of our experts that we’re having over this Summer Takeover series.
Again, Preston, really appreciate your time today.
Preston Gregg
Thanks Alexis. Love the show and honored to be a little part of it.
Alexis
Yay.
