IT staff augmentation usually means placing a consultant or three on an engagement that will last six months to a year. Occasionally, though, an organization has a project that needs more than a few good consultants.

Some projects require a team that’s assembled, trained, and delivered by the staffing firm.

Over the years, our clients have asked us to provide teams on several occasions, so we have some experience with delivering teams to our clients. Here are a few of our favorite team stories:

• An international PC manufacturer needed a team of consultants who could assist their customers with deploying Windows easily. We sourced, trained, and assembled a team of IT pros with a background in Windows networking and trained them in the process and tools for automating Windows deployment. The client eventually hired many of the trained consultants we provided.

• A global manufacturing firm with more than 40,000 end users worldwide needed packaging code written to facilitate installation and upgrades for each of a thousand applications. We provided a three-person Application Packaging and Deployment Services (APDS) team to replace the team that began the work. In less than four months, the APDS had completed 300 percent of the work done by the previous team, with zero errors in the work. In addition, the APDS team completely documented all the steps in the process of packaging desktop applications for manual and automatic deployment. By doing that work, the team essentially gave the client a handbook for packaging applications.
• A pharmaceuticals distributor had decided to upgrade enterprise software. The implementation would take about 24 months and would require the total focus of the distributor’s IT staff. We delivered a team to the company to keep their current software running. The team included an experienced Project Manager who would oversee daily activities; we trained the PM in the company’s preferred methodology. The team we delivered basically ran their IT operations while the staff worked on implementing the new software, everything from project management to the help desk.
• A government agency needed a development team to re-platform some software applications used internally. The team would have to work offsite because the agency lacked space at its facility and also because the security clearance required for that facility would take weeks to complete. We assembled the team, made room for them in one of our offices, and the team was productive immediately.

Sure, we’ve got more stories like that, but this is a blog post; it’s not a comprehensive list. We know how to assemble teams, train them, and provide them the resources they need to make an immediate impact for the client.

And we enjoy doing it.