Consulting vs Staff Augmentation

In staff augmentation, the client is primarily buying capacity. In consulting, the client is primarily buying an outcome, judgment, or expertise. A useful test is: If the client already knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it, would they still need you? If yes, because they simply need another competent person to execute the work, that is usually staff augmentation. If no, because a major part of your value is figuring out what should be done, reducing ambiguity, making tradeoffs, designing the approach, negotiating scope, or guiding the customer, that is consulting. For example, these can use exactly the same AWS technologies. Staff augmentation: The customer needs another Terraform/AWS engineer for six months. Here is the backlog. Join the standups, pick up tickets, follow our architecture and processes. Consulting: The customer wants to modernize this application and move it to AWS. They have business goals but the technical path is unclear. Determine the target…