4 Signs That Your Tech Partner is Reliable

In a previous article, I wrote about the 4 things you should look at when choosing your technical staff augmentation partner. In this article, I highlight the 4 signs that tell if your partner is reliable for a long and fruitful journey together.

Communication

When you start working with an agency, it's important that communication with them is frequent at the beginning and regular throughout. Having a weekly sync-up call is helpful. It does not have to be a one-hour call. It could be a 15-minute status update to make sure that the engineer's performance is satisfactory and to address non-technical matters (paperwork, IT, invoicing, etc.).

Other important communication aspects include:

• Account manager: a customer-centric agency dedicates an account manager to your company to handle your requests and work towards your success.
• Channels: while more communication channels (email, Slack, phone) could theoretically mean easier access to your account manager, the key is to agree on when to use which channel. For example, regular asynchronous communication should be done by email or Slack whereas urgent matters will be settled over the phone.
• Responsiveness: all of the above does not help if your counterpart is not responsive. It's a critical element to have a responsive account manager who attends to your requests in a timely manner. Note that responsiveness does not mean immediate action, but rather message acknowledgement in a reasonable time frame and setting expectations from the outset.

Employee Management

How a company treats their team reflects its values and who it truly is. You want to work with a partner that considers their team a real asset. At the end of the day, this team is your asset too.

Ask your agency questions such as:

• How frequently do you meet with your engineers?
• How much do you invest in their training and upskilling?
• What's your talent retention rate?
• What does your performance appraisal process look like?

You need to be sure that your agency takes good care of their team. When this is the case, the return will be clearly visible to you.

IT Policies

No one wants to see their confidential information exposed publicly or their source code used by third parties. Fortunately, there are procedures and policies that agencies put in place to protect the client's hardware, software, and Intellectual Property (IP) from unauthorized access.

These policies are generally part of a broader information security framework that governs how client data is used, how it is protected, where it is stored, who can access it, etc. Here's a non-exhaustive list of policies your agency should have:

• Information Security policy
• Confidentiality policy and agreement
• Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan
• Acceptable Use policy
• Password policy
• Privacy policy
• Non-disclosure agreement

Scalability

One of the main reasons companies resort to staff augmentation agencies is a temporary scale-up need. This typically happens when a firm needs to increase its team size without permanently hiring more people.

After you start working with a staff augmentation agency, you might face a scale-up situation. At that point, it's important for your partner to be ready to provide the needed talent in a reasonable time frame to avoid you losing an opportunity or being unable to deliver. They should be always growing their talent pool in all areas, and especially in your skillset of interest.

Make sure to align with your account manager on your possible future needs every now and then. This will help you both align expectations and prevent frustration at a time when you most need streamlined cooperation.

I'm sure there are more signs to look at to make sure your tech staff augmentation partner is trustworthy and reliable. Feel free share your thoughts in the comments.

‍