Throw it away - Why you shouldn't keep your POC

"Proof of Concepts" are a vital part of many projects, particularly towards the beginning of the project lifecycle, or even in the pre-business case stages.

They are crucial for ensuring that facts are gathered before some particularly risk decisions are made.  Technical or functional, they can address many different concerns and each one can be different, but they all have one thing in common.  They serve to answer questions.

It can be tempting, whilst answering these questions to become attached to the code that you generate.

I would strongly argue that you should almost never keep the code that you build during a POC.  Certainly not to put into a production system.

I'd go so far as to say that planning to keep the code it is often damaging to the proof of concept; planning to throw the code away is liberating, more efficient and makes proof of concepts more effective by focussing the minds on the questions that require answers..

Why do we set out on a proof of concept?

The purpose of a proof of concept is to (by definition):

  * Prove:  Demonstrate the truth or existence of something by evidence or argument.
  * Concept: An idea, a plan or intention.

In most cases, the concept being proven is a technical one.  For example:
  * Will this language be suitable for building x?
  * Can I embed x inside y and get them talking to each other?
  * If I put product x on infrastructure y will it basically stand up?

They can also be functional, but the principles remain the same for both.

It's hard to imagine a proof of concept that cannot be phrased as one or more questions.  In a lot of cases I'd suggest that there's only really one important question with a number of ancillary questions that are used to build a body of evidence.

The implication of embarking on a proof of concept is that when you start you don't know the answer to the questions you're asking.  If you *do* already know the answers, then the POC is of no value to you.

By extension, there is the implication that the questions posed require to be answered as soon as possible in order to support a decision.  If that's not the case then, again, the POC is probably not of value to you.

As such, the only thing that the POC should aim to achieve is to answer the question posed and to do so as quickly as possible.

This is quite different to what we set out to do in our normal software development process. 

We normally know the answer to the main question we're asking (How do we functionally provide a solution to this problem / take advantage of this opportunity), and most of the time is spent focussed on building something that is solid, performs well and generally good enough to live in a production environment - in essence, not answering the question, but producing software.

What process do we follow when embarking on a proof of concept?

Since the aim of a POC is distinct from what we normally set out to achieve, the process for a POC is intrinsically different to that for the development of a production system.

With the main question in mind, you often follow an almost scientific process.  You put forward a hypothesis, you set yourself tasks that are aimed at collecting evidence that will support or deny that hypothesis, you analyse the data, put forward a revised hypothesis and you start again.

You keep going round in this routine until you feel you have an answer to the question and enough evidence to back that answer up.  It is an entirely exploratory process.

Often, you will find that you spend days following avenues that don't lead anywhere, backtrack and reassess, following a zig-zag path through a minefield of wrong answers until you reach the end point.  In this kind of situation, the code you have produced is probably one of the most barnacle riddled messes you have every produced.

But that's OK.  The reason for the POC wasn't to build a codebase, it was to provide an answer to a question and a body of evidence that supports that answer.

To illustrate:

Will this language be suitable for building x?

You may need to check things like that you can build the right type of user interfaces, that APIs can be created, that there are ways of organising code that makes sense for the long term maintenance for the system.

You probably don't need to build a completely functional UI, create a fully functioning API with solid error handling or define the full set of standards for implementing a production quality system in the given language.

That said, if you were building a production system in the language you wouldn't dream of having in incomplete UI, or an API that doesn't handle errors completely or just knocking stuff together in an ad-hoc manner.

Can I embed x inside y and get them talking to each other

You will probably need to define a communication method and prove that it basically works.  Get something up and running that is at least reasonably functional in the "through the middle" test case.

You probably don't need to develop an architecture that is clean with separation of concerns that means the systems are properly independant and backwards compatible with existing integrations. Or that all interactions are properly captured and that exceptional circumstances are dealt with correctly.

That said, if you were building a production system, you'd need to ensure that you define the full layered architecture, understand the implications of lost messages, prove the level of chat that will occur between the systems.  On top of that you need to know that you don't impact pre-existing behaviour or APIs.

If I put product x on infrastructure y will it basically stand up?

You probably need to just get the software on there and run your automated tests.  Maybe you need to prove the performance and so you'll put together some ad-hoc performance scripts.

You probably don't need to prove that your release mechanism is solid and repeatable, or ensure that your automated tests cover some of the peculiarities of the new infrastructure, or that you have a good set of long term performance test scripts that drop into your standard development and deployment process.

That said, if you were building a production system, you'd need to know exactly how the deployments worked, fit it into your existing continuous delivery suite, performance test and analyse on an automated schedule.

Production development and Proof of Concept development is not the same

The point is, when you are building a production system you have to do a lot of leg-work; you know you can validate all the input being submitted in a form, or coming through an API - you just have to do it.

You need to ensure that the functionality you're providing works in the majority of use-cases, and if you're working in a TDD environment then you will prove that by writing automated tests before you've even started creating that functionality.

When you're building a proof of concept, not only should these tests be a lower priority, I would argue that they should be *no priority whatsoever*, unless they serve to test the concept that you're trying to prove.

That is,  you're not usually trying to ensure that this piece of code works in all use-cases, but rather that this concept works in the general case with a degree of certainty that you can *extend* it to all cases.

Ultimately, the important deliverable of a POC is proof that the concept works, or doesn't work; the exploration of ideas and the conclusion you come to; the journey of discovery and the destination of the answer to the question originally posed.

That is intellectual currency, not software.  The important delivery of a production build is the software that is built.

That is the fundamental difference, and why you should throw your code away.

The opportunity cost of delaying software releases

Let me paint a simple picture (but with lots of numbers).

Some software has been built.  It generates revenue (or reduces cost) associated with sales, but the effect is not immediate.  It could be the implementation of a process change that takes a little time to bed in, or the release of a new optional extra that not everyone will want immediately.

It is expected that when it is initially released there’ll be a small effect.  Over the next 6 months there will be an accelerating uptake until it reaches saturation point and levels off.

Nothing particularly unusual about that plan.  It probably describes a lot of small scale software projects.
Now let’s put some numbers against that.

At saturation point it’s expected to generate / save an amount equal to 2% of the total revenue of the business.  It might be an ambitious number, but it’s not unrealistic.

The business initially generates £250k a month, and experiences steady growth of around 10% a year.

What does the revenue generation of that software look like over the first 12 months?

It’s pretty easy to calculate, plugging in some percentages that reflect the uptake curve:

Period	Original Business Revenue	Software Revenue Generation	Additional Revenue
1	£250,000.00	0.2%	£500.00
2	£252,500.00	0.5%	£1,262.50
3	£255,025.00	1.1%	£2,805.28
4	£257,575.25	1.6%	£4,121.20
5	£260,151.00	1.9%	£4,942.87
6	£262,752.51	2.0%	£5,255.05
7	£265,380.04	2.0%	£5,307.60
8	£268,033.84	2.0%	£5,360.68
9	£270,714.18	2.0%	£5,414.28
10	£273,421.32	2.0%	£5,468.43
11	£276,155.53	2.0%	£5,523.11
12	£278,917.09	2.0%	£5,578.34
		Total:	£51,539.34

Or, shown on a graph:

So, here’s a question:

What is the opportunity cost of delaying the release by 2 months?

The initial thought might be that the effect isn’t that significant, as the software doesn’t generate a huge amount of cash in the first couple of months.

Modelling it, we end up with this:

Period	Original Business Revenue	Software Revenue Generation	Additional Revenue
1	£250,000.00		£-
2	£252,500.00		£-
3	£255,025.00	0.2%	£510.05
4	£257,575.25	0.5%	£1,287.88
5	£260,151.00	1.1%	£2,861.66
6	£262,752.51	1.6%	£4,204.04
7	£265,380.04	1.9%	£5,042.22
8	£268,033.84	2.0%	£5,360.68
9	£270,714.18	2.0%	£5,414.28
10	£273,421.32	2.0%	£5,468.43
11	£276,155.53	2.0%	£5,523.11
12	£278,917.09	2.0%	£5,578.34
		Total:	£41,250.69

Let’s show that on a comparative graph, showing monthly generated revenue:

Or, even more illustrative, the total generated revenue:

By releasing 2 months later, we do not lose the first 2 months revenue – we lose the revenue roughly equivalent to P5 and P6.

Why?

When we release in P3, we don’t immediately get the P3 revenue we would have got.  Instead we get something roughly equivalent to P1 (it’s slightly higher because the business generates a little more revenue overall in P3 than it did in P1).

This trend continues in P3 through to P8, where the late release finally reaches saturation point (2 periods later than the early release – of course).

Throughout the whole of P1 to P7 the late release has an opportunity cost associated.  That opportunity cost is never recovered later in the software’s lifespan as the revenue / cost we could have generated the effect from is gone.

If the business was not growing, this would amount to a total equal to the last 2 periods of the year.

In our specific example, the total cost of delaying the release for 2 months amounts to 20% of the original expected revenue generation for the software project in the first year.

And this opportunity cost is solely related to the way in which the revenue will be generated; the rate at which the uptake comes in over the first 6 months.

Or to put it another way – in this example, if you were to increase or decrease the revenue of the business or the percentage generation at which you reach saturation point the cost will always be 20%.

So, when you’re thinking of delaying the release of software it’s probably worth taking a look, modelling your expected uptake and revenue generation to calculate just how much that will cost you…

Redundancies should come with a pay rise

As far as I can see, there is only one reason why a company should ever make redundancies.

Due to some unforseen circumstances the business has become larger than the market conditions can support and it needs to shrink in order to bring it back in line.

Every other reason is simply a minor variation or a consequence of that underlying reason.

Therefore, if the motivation is clear, and the matter dealt with successfully, then once the redundancies are over the business should be "right sized" (we've all heard that term before), and it should be able to carry on operating with the same values, practices and approach that it did prior to the redundancies.

If the business can't, then I would suggest is that it is not the right size for the market conditions and therefore the job isn't complete.

OK, there may be some caveats to that, but to my mind this reasoning is sound.

In detail:

When you reduce the headcount of the business you look for the essential positions in the company, keep those, and get rid of the rest.

Once the redundancies are finished you should be left with only the positions you need to keep in order to operate successfully.

It's tempting to think that you should have a recruitment freeze and not back-fill positions when people leave, but if someone leaves and you don't need to replace them, then that means you didn't need that position, in which case you should have made it redundant.

Not back-filling positions is effectively the same as allowing your employees to choose who goes based on their personal motives rather than force the business heads to choose based on the business motives.  This doesn't make business sense.

So, you need to be decisive and cut as far as you can go without limiting your ability to operate within the current market conditions.

To add to that, recruitment is expensive.  If you're in a highly skilled market then you'll likely use an agency. They can easily charge 20% of a salary for a perm head.  On top of that you have the cost of bringing someone up to speed, at a time when you're running at the minimum size your market will allow.  Plus there's the cost of inefficiency during the onboarding period as well as the increased chance of the remaining overstretched employees leaving as well.

The upshot is that you really can't afford to have people leave, it's so expensive that it jeopardises the extremely hard work you did when you made the redundancies.

There's a theory I often hear that you can't have contractors working when the perm heads are being marched out.  That's a perfectly valid argument if the perm head would be of long term value to you and can do the job that the contract head can do.  But if you need the contractor to do a job that only lasts another 3 months and that person is by far the best or only person you have for the job, then the argument just doesn't stand up.  Get rid of the perm position now and use the contractor, it'll be cheaper and more beneficial to the business in the long run.

OK, that's maybe not the most sentimental of arguments, but why would you worry about hurting the feelings of people who no longer work for you, at the expense of those that still do?

It may even be worse than that - you could be jeopardising the jobs of others that remain by not operating in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Another prime example is maternity cover.  If you need the person on maternity to come back to work then you almost certainly need the person covering them. If it's early in the maternity leave then you'll have a long period with limited staff, if it's late in the leave then you only need the temporary cover for a short period more. Either way you're overstretching the perm staff left to cover them and risking having them leave.

Finally, there's the motivation to ensure that the business that remains is running as lean as possible. That costs are as low as they could be. The temptation is to cut the training and entertainments budget to minimum and pull back on the benefits package.
As soon as you do this you fundamentally change the character of the business.  If you always prided yourself on being at the forefront of training then you attracted and kept staff who valued that. If you always had an open tab on a Friday night at the local bar, then you attracted people who valued that.  Whatever it is that you are cutting back on, you are saying to people who valued it that "we no longer want to be as attractive to you as we once were; we do not value you quite as much as we did". This might not be your intention, but it is the message your staff will hear.

I put it to you that the cheapest way to reduce costs after redundancies is to be completely honest to the staff you keep. Say it was difficult, say that you're running at minimum and that a lot will be expected of whoever's left. But tell them that they're still here because they're the best of the company and they are vital to the company's success.  Let them know that the contractors you've kept are there because they're the best people for those positions to ensure that the company succeeds.  Tell them that the contractors will be gone the moment they're not generating value or when a perm head would be more appropriate.  Make it clear that the company is now at the right size and the last thing you want is for people to leave, because you value them and that if they left it would damage your ability to do business.

Then give them a pay rise and a party to prove it.

Agile and UX can mix

User experience design is an agile developer's worst nightmare. You want to make a change to a system, so you research. You collect usage stats, you analyse hotspots, you review, you examine user journeys, you review, you look at drop off rates, you review. Once you've got enough data you start to design. You paper prototype, run through with users, create wireframes, run through with users, build prototypes, run through with users, do spoken journey and video analysis, iterate, iterate, iterate, until finally you have a design.

Then you get the developers to build it, exactly as you designed it.

Agile development, on the other hand, is a user experience expert's worst nightmare. You want to make a change to a system, so you decide what's the most important bit, and you design and build that - don't worry how it fits into the bigger picture, show it to the users, move on to the next bit, iterate, iterate, iterate, until finally you have a system.

Then you get the user experience expert to fix all the clumsy workflows.

The two approaches are fundamentally opposed.

Aren't they?

Well, of course, I'm exaggerating for comic effect, but these impressions are only exaggerations - they're not complete fabrications.

If you look at what's going on, both approaches have the same underlying principle - your users don't know what they want until they see something. Only then do they have something to test their ideas against.  Both sides agree, the earlier you get something tangible in front of users and the more appropriate and successful the solution will be.

The only real difference in the two approaches as described is the balance between scope of design and fullness of implementation. On the UX side the favour is for maximum scope of design and minimal implementation; the agile side favours minimal scope of design and maximum implementation.

The trick is to acknowledge this difference and bring them closer together, or mitigate against the risks those differences bring.

Or, the put it another way, the main problem you have with combining these two approaches is the lead up time before development starts.

In the agile world some people would like to think that developing based on a whim is a great way to work, but the reality is different. Every story that is developed will have gone through some phase of analysis even in the lightest of light touch processes. Not least someone has decided that a problem needs fixing.  Even in the most agile of teams there needs to be some due diligence and prioritisation.

This happens not just at the small scale, but also when deciding which overarching areas of functionality to change. In some organisations there will be a project (not a dirty word), in some a phase, in others a sprint. Whatever its called it'll be a consistent set of stories that build up to be a fairly large scale change in the system. This will have gone through some kind of appraisal process, and rightly so.

Whilst I don't particularly believe in business cases, I do believe in due diligence.

It is in this phase, the research, appraisal and problem definition stage, that UX research can start without having a significant impact on the start-up time. Statistics can be gathered and evidence amassed to describe the problem that needs to be addressed. This can form a critical part of the argument to start work.

In fact, this research can become part the business-as-usual activities of the team and can be used to discover issues that need to be addressed. This can be as "big process" as you want it to be, just as long as you are willing, and have the resources to pick up the problems that you find, and that you have the agility to react to clear findings as quickly as possible. Basically, you need to avoid being in the situation where you know there's a problem but you can't start to fix it because your process states you need to finish your 2 month research phase.

When you are in this discovery phase there's nothing wrong with starting to feel out some possible solutions. Ideas that can be used to illustrate the problem and the potential benefits of addressing it. Just as long as the techniques you use do not result in high cost and (to reiterate) a lack of ability to react quickly.

Whilst I think its OK to use whatever techniques work for you, for me the key to keeping the reaction time down is to keep it lightweight.  That is, make sure you're always doing enough to find out what you need to know, but not so much that it takes you a long time to reach conclusions and start to address them. User surveys, spoken narrative and video recordings, all of which can be done remotely, can be done at any time, and once you're in the routine of doing them they needn't be expensive.   Be aware that large sample sets might improve the accuracy of your research, but they also slow you down.  Keep the groups small and focused - applicable to the size of team you have to analyse and react to the data. Done right, these groups can be used to continually scrutinise your system and uncover problems.

Once those problems are found, the same evidence can be used to guide potential solutions. Produce some quick lo-fi designs, present them to another (or the same, if you are so inclined) small group and wireframe the best ones to include in your argument to proceed.  I honestly believe that once you're in the habit, this whole process can be implemented in two or three weeks.

Having got the go ahead, you have a coherent picture of the problem and a solid starting point for you commence the full blown design work.  You can then move into a short, sharp and probably seriously intense design phase.

At all points, the design that you're coming up with is, of course, important. However, it's vital that you don't underestimate the value of the thinking process that goes into the design. Keep earlier iterations of the design, keep notes on why the design changed. This forms a reference document that you can use to remind yourself of the reasoning behind your design. This needn't be a huge formal tome; it could be as simple as comments in your wireframes, but an aide mémoire for the rationale behind where you are today is important.

In this short sharp design phase you need to make sure that you get to an initial conclusion quickly and that you bear in mind that this will almost certainly not be the design that you actually end up with.  This initial design is primarily used to illustrate the problem and the current thinking on the solution to the developers. It is absolutely not a final reference document.

As soon as you become wedded to a design, you lose the ability to be agile. Almost by definition, an agile project will not deliver exactly the functionality it set out deliver. Recognise this and ensure that you do the level of design appropriate to bring the project to life and no more.

When the development starts, the UX design work doesn't stop. This is where the ultimate design work begins - the point at which the two approaches start to meld.

As the developers start to produce work, the UX expert starts to have the richest material he could have - a real system. It is quite amazing how quickly an agile project can produce a working system that you are able to put in front of users, and there's nothing quite like a real system for investigating system design.

It's not that the wireframes are longer of use. In fact, early on the wireframes remain a vital, and probably only coherent view of the system and these should evolve as the project develops.  As elements in the system get built and more rigidly set the wireframes are updated to reflect them. As new problems and opportunities are discovered, the wireframes are used to explore them.

This process moves along in parallel to the BA work that's taking place on the project. As the customer team splits and prioritises the work, the UX expert turns their attention to the detail of their immediate problems, hand in hand with the BAs. The design that's produced is then used to explain the proposed solutions to the development team and act as a useful piece of reference material.

At this point the developers will often have strong opinions on the design of the solution, and these should obviously be heard. The advantage the design team now have is that they have a body of research and previous design directions to draw on, and a coherent complete picture against which these ideas (and often criticisms) can be scrutinised.  It's not that the design is complete, or final, it's that a valuable body of work has just been done, which can be drawn upon in order to produce the solution.

As you get towards the end of the project, more and more of the wireframe represents the final product.  At this point functionality can be removed from the wireframe in line with what's expected to be built.  In fact, this is true all the way through the project, it's just that people become more acutely aware of it towards the end.

This is a useful means of testing the minimum viable product. It allows you to check with the customer team how much can be taken away before you have a system that could not be released: a crucial tool in a truly agile project.  If you don't have the wireframes to show people, the description of functionality that's going to be in or out can be open to interpretation - which means it's open to misunderstanding.

Conclusion

It takes work to bring a UX expert into an agile project, and it takes awareness and honesty to ensure that you're not introducing a big-up-front design process that reduces your ability to react.

However, by keeping in mind some core principles - that you need to be able to throw and willing to throw work away, you should not become wedded to a design early on, you listen to feedback and react, you keep your level of work and techniques fit for the just-in-time problem that you need to solve right now - you can add four huge advantages to your project.

• A coherent view and design that bind the disparate elements together into a complete system.
• Expert techniques and knowledge that allow you to discover the right problems to fix with greater accuracy.
• Design practices and investigative processes that allow you to test potential solutions earlier in the project (i.e. with less cost) than would otherwise be possible, helping ensure you do the right things at the right time.
• Extremely expressive communication tools that allow you to describe the system you're going to deliver as that understanding changes through the project.

Do it right and you can do all this and still be agile.

Remote workforces and the 12 golden questions

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day about the difficulties in managing a remote team. That is a team who aren't all located in the same office. Some may be home workers, some may work in different offices.  The main crux of the discussion was around how you turn a group of people into team, garner some emotional connection between them, and to you and your company, and then get the best out of them.

After a few days of gestation and rumination it came to me. The rules are the same as with a local team - you may do different things and the problems may be more difficult to overcome, but the techniques you use are fundamentally the same.

That thinking led me back to Marcus Buckingham's fantastic book "First Break all the Rules". If you manage people and haven't read this book - shame on you. It is a must read.

One of the main arguments in the book revolves around a set of questions you should ask of your staff defined by years of research by Gallup based on the strongest signifiers of a team that is performing well.

If you get good responses to these questions then you probably have a good team.

Now I'm not going to explain the why's and wherefores of these questions, that has been done far better than I ever could in Marcus's book. Buy it and read it.

What I'd like to do is go over each of the questions and look at what you may need to do as a manager of a remote team in order to ensure that you get positive responses to these questions.

I know what is expected of me at work.

Much like you would with a locally grouped team this is as simple, and as difficult as it sounds: keeping in touch, setting targets and boundaries, being available and honest. All those things that a good manager instinctively does.

The only real difference is that it takes more effort to organise those face-to-face chats.

It starts with honesty at the interview: clearly defining the role that's on offer, what's involved and what's not involved. From there it moves to regular catch ups to get a feel for where they think they are, and for you to feed back where they actually are, then finally to ensuring that rewards and praise are given when the expectations are met and exceeded.  Put in the simplest of terms you're regularly telling them what you expect then reinforcing that with action.

For some people this will feel like constant badgering, and for others you'll never be able to do enough, but I don't think there's anything about remote working that makes this fundamentally different to managing local workers.

I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.

Every tool you would normally provide in an office you should expect to provide for a remote worker. OK, maybe not the pen and pad, but you could consider corporate branded versions of both. At least it's a reminder of who they work for!

Every bit of software you would normally provide on a desktop needs to be available in their home office. 

Every document that they may need to access on the move should be available on-line   Workers that are expected to spend most their time on client sites should have access to software that is appropriate for onsite work from any device that has internet access.  Ideally they should have offline versions too. I.e. access to versions of their software that works when not connected to the internet, that will automatically sync when the connection is made available.  If you've ever used gmail, blogger or evernote on a disconnected tablet you will know what I mean.

You need to do everything you can to limit the chances that they'll ever be in a situation where they are disconnected from their tools.

At work I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

You might hope that this should be easier to achieve with remote workers than it would with a team in a single office.  Working on the move or at home gives people a chance to get on and do some work with out all those pesky distractions like other people.

However, its very easy to underestimate the impact remote working has on ease of communication, and in turn, the amount of time it takes to have those communications.  If you're not careful, those informal 2 minute chats in the kitchen turn into 1000 word project update documents.  You can see how there can be a death off a thousand cuts as layers of bureaucracy are added in order to keep everyone in the loop.

In addition, how can a manager see what a team member is best at when they don't physically witness them doing it.  It's not always easy in the office to spot someone's talents (or areas of difficulty for that matter) and guide them towards utilising them.  It's an order of magnitude harder when you don't spend that vital face to face time with them every day.

Ironically it can be tempting to have people fill in time-sheets and detailed updates in order to help spot the things that are done quickly and well, that are second nature, but then this simply distracts people from what they do best, and not everyone's talent is writing updates!

There's no simple answer to this. It takes a very special manager who can read their employees from a distance and a special kind of employee who is self aware enough to be honest about their strengths and weaknesses.  It starts with the culture of the management team and their all pervasive attitude towards spotting strengths.  They need to make sure that the workforce is constantly aware that this is the approach the management team is taking and that gives employees a strong incentive to be honest.

Part of that is then listening to your staff when they describe areas if difficulties. Sometimes this may highlight personal areas where the talents are lacking, in others it may be that the processes are getting in the way of providing real value. In either case you need to clearly assess the situation and act decisively and positively when needed.

It's vital that everybody is very clear about what they, and their team, do best and that people are allowed to focus on that as much as possible.

In the last 7 days I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

This one should be simple.  All you have to do is follow the same rules that you normally would in the office: praise publicly or privately depending on the person you're dealing with.

Praise successes at the monthly get together, on the intranet, via mail, a conference call or a chat on the phone whichever is appropriate for the person and level of success.  However, whenever, just don't forget to do it.

Of course, you have to be much more diligent about this since the people you're praising aren't in front if you all the time.  It's harder to spot their frustration and disenchantment when they're not getting the praise they feel they deserve - you can't see their face and their minute by minute attitude.  For this reason I'd suggest that it's probably better to err on the side of too much praise than too little, and maybe even have a reminder in your calendar that pops up every couple of days so you don't forget.

My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.

The main thing is honesty, and if you can fake that you've got it made...

In all seriousness though, you do actually need to care.  In order to care you need to connect with people. 

You'll spot a repeating theme here, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, you can only connect with people if you communicate with them, and with a remote workforce that takes a lot of effort.

Whilst this point isn't just about the tough times, if you find someone's having a hard time then you need to break that remoteness, get yourself into their locale and meet up on neutral territory. Show that you care enough about them as a person that you'll take the time to go see them in their local café.  Show that its not all one way, that you'll make the effort.

It's about making sure that your team know that it's not all about the work they need to do today, but it's about them as a human-being having a valued place in a team that supports each other.

For some people it will be inappropriate to cross into the personal life, maybe they like working in a remote team because of the fact that its remote. However, it can still be valuable for those people to know that you understand and respect that, rather than simply don't care about them.

Even people who don't want regular catch ups want to be reminded that you know that and you're trying your best to act in line with their desires.

You have to be extremely careful about crossing people's personal boundaries and invading into their personal space.  Be honest with yourself about that, and recognise that not everyone wants their boss to be their best friend and that for most people it would be extremely distressing if you turned up on their doorstep unannounced!

There is someone at work who encourages my development.

When you're working remotely it can sometimes seem like you have nothing other than unrealistic demands, one after the other from a manager who can then veer wildly to forgetting you exist. This is what you need to try to overcome.

There needs to be a tough combination of slack in the schedule, freedom to explore and encouragement to follow new paths.

If your team have no time to do anything other than the day's work then they have no opportunity to develop.

If they have plenty of time, but no contact then they'll feel you don't care about their development.

You need to bring conversations on development to the front and ensure that they're had out loud.

Ensure that you have a process in place to discuss the direction your staff want to move in and ensure that they have the support they need in order to take those steps.  This may involve having decent expenditure on training, on in house resources and applications, it may be as simple as just letting your staff have time to explore.  It certainly includes letting them fail from time to time and not being judgemental about the outcome.

Not all this can be done remotely. It's tough to feel the support of someone that is not physically present, and  as with so many of these points you need to acknowledge that you're going to travel. You absolutely need some face to face time.

It may be that you need to put a central training team together and fly, train or bus people in to get their training.

You should!

It may end up being more expensive than it would have been to have a co-located office and training team, but that's the decision you took when you decided to employ a remote team.

Good quality learning and development software can help, as can access to third-party on-line training catalogues and I imagine that there is a greater return on investment on these tools than there would be in a local office.  However, making courses available to people is not the same as encouraging and supporting them in their development.

Consider mentoring programmes and ensure that you pay the expenses to get people together with their mentors.  Don't just assume that the mentors know what they're doing, put a mentoring team together so that they can support each other, and ensure that you have a training budget to teaching people how to be a mentor.  Don't forget, being a mentor can be a great way to develop the mentor!

If you want your team to think you're serious about their development, you need to get serious about their development.

At work my opinions seem to count

I'd suggest that in order for a new team member to feel their opinions matter they first need to feel that their co-workers' opinions matter.

From that you can then gestate the idea that they are allowed to have opinions, leading to you following through on some of their thoughts and ideas so that they feel their ideas matter.

Simple eh?

At the core of it, as always is the need to communicate. Not just back to the team member with the big idea, or serious concern, but with the whole team.

Regularly asking for feedback and opinions and then acting upon them. Becoming known as the manager that doesn't always assume that they know better.

Technology can help with this.  Open forums with no moderation (unless it's absolutely necessary). Having everyone involved in it, from the CEO to the intern, and a culture of respect around the postings that means every question or idea is addressed with care and thought.

That's not to say that every post is publicly stated as the best idea or most insightful question there has ever been, but that common courtesy and time is given in the response.  Most sane people have no problem being told they're wrong as long as it is clear and respectful and comes with an invitation for more.

There is also the HR angle: that people need to be able to state when they think a co-worker is not up to scratch, behaving inappropriately or suchlike.

Accessibility, openness and a visible commitment to acting on information is the only way to get this feeling fostered.  And guess what, it comes back again to two way communication.

The mission / purpose of my company make me feel my job is important.

OK, so it can seem that there's very little you can do about this, either your company resonates with your employees or it doesn't. The reality is that you can affect this quite significantly.

It's all too easy to recruit without your companies values in mind. And when I say values, I don't mean those in your company brochure, I mean those true values that actually drive the business.

An estate agents is never going to be driven by anything other than selling or letting houses, and that's the way it should be. There are different ways in which you a company may approach that, but the core value is one that selling houses is a good thing, and that you'll make money out of it.

Put simply, if you're an estate agent and you hire someone who thinks that a buoyant housing market, the need for a 'property ladder', low interest rates, and easy access to credit is a bad thing then you've hired someone who will never feel their job is important.

Consider that in your recruitment process.

I'm not saying that you can't , or shouldn't have a business with a mix of opinions, merely that you should honestly recognise the limitations of internal corporate marketing.

Having said that, you do need to market the business internally. You still need to remind people why they are here, and why the company is doing what it's doing. If you don't define the culture of the business then individuals will impose a culture upon it and it may not be the one you want. An outgoing but negative employee can very easily, and often quite unintentionally impose a negative culture on the whole of a department.

As with so many of these topics, communication is the key, more so with a remote workforce than at any other time.

Let the team know what the company feels is important, and make sure you don't stray too far from the credible truth or your employees will start to think you stand for lies.

My co-workers are committed to doing quality work.

There are three significant risks with a remote workforce that can put this into jeopardy.

First - it can be difficult to spot when you have a member of the team that's not committed to quality work.

Second - it can be difficult to sot someone who thinks their team-mates are not committed to quality work.

Third - it can be difficult to ensure that everyone knows what quality work their team-mates are doing.

With many of the other points the focus is on communication in order to feedback on progress both up and down the chain of command. This is much more focused on the sideways communication.

At the simplest level this is about regular cross team updates where you ensure that everyone knows what's going on in the whole team, particularly highlighting points of note.  This directly addresses the third risk, but doesn't deal with the other two.

You need to follow it up by fostering an environment where feedback on peers is taken seriously.  You need to ensure that your team feel comfortable asking about their team mates' progress, or pointing out areas of concern or difficulty.

This involves giving an honest and clear response.

If you feel the comments are unjustified you need to be able to clearly state why, but still then ensure you take the comments on board and react to them. Recognise that they may know more about the situation than you do.  You need to give that dual impression - you value feedback, and that you value your staff - you'll hear criticism and concern and act to rectify issues, but you'll defend and protect when it is unjustified.

I have a good friend at work?

Obviously a collection of remote workers have far fewer chances to socialise than those working together in an office.  They'll never just decide to go to the pub on a Wednesday evening and never naturally make those odd cross department smoking cliques, nor football ones neither - all simply because they're not at the office.  This means they are far less likely to make the same kinds of personal connections than they would otherwise.

The problem and potential solutions are fairly clear but easy to overlook.

You absolutely have to have a higher than usual entertainments budget. You have to meet up at least every month in order for those face to face relationships to blossom. But it's more than that. You have to foster an environment where building remote relationships is also the norm. You have to provide virtual replacements for the Wednesday evening pub and smoker's corner.

For example, your management team must have a relaxed attitude when communicating via mail.  It has to be clear that email system is more than just a business tool, that it can be a social one too. You have to make an effort to build an environment in which social networks will blossom.

Consider tools like Yammer (corporate social networking site) and then push the management to actually use them, for a combination of business and social reasons.

Provide the mechanism to allow for the hosting of virtual book clubs, badminton ladders and a Modern Warfare 3 clan.

Recognise the kinds of people you have employed and ensure that they have a means of accessing people at work who are like minded and then make it feel normal that they will reach out and find each other.

What offices you do have, don't be afraid to add a big chill out area and kitchen so that when people are in the office they get that reinforcement - "this is a company where we actively encourage you to be friends"

In the last six months someone at work has talked to me about my progress.

There is no reason why this should be difficult. Organise regular meetings, on-line or otherwise, to discuss progress. Have a solid process in place that can flex for individual needs.  All the things you would normally do.  Every six months is a bare minimum, every two is OK, once a month is ideal - as a general rule.

I could labour the point, but I think most of what needs to be said has been said already!

This last year I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

It can be very tempting to feel that your home workers are sitting at home happy in the knowledge that they're doing a good job and have a great work home life balance. Maybe that's true. Maybe all they want is to get their job done and then play in the garden with their kids.

Maybe.

However, just because they're remote doesn't mean they're not ambitious.  I don't think there's any reason why a home worker will be any less likely than an office one to want to progress, either in their career, or personally.

Also, not every remote worker is a home worker.

Those team members that are sitting at a desk 50 miles away, out of sight, are more able to look for opportunities outside of your company than someone that's sat 5 metres away.  Take their progress as seriously as you would any other staff member's.

Catch up regularly to learn about their goals and then do what you can to help them reach the realistic ones, learn about their career concerns and do what you can to help them overcome them, or to placate them.

Tailor your roles to suit the talents and desires of your team members and make sure you give the ones who need, deserve and are up to it the opportunity to stretch themselves in new directions.

If you don't give your team members the encouragement and opportunity to develop then they'll find the opportunities through a new role in a new company, and just like your local workers, you'll have no idea it's going to happen until it's too late.

So, do more than you think you need to!

Conclusion

Good management is good management, regardless of how local or remote the team is, and good management takes effort.

The truth of the matter is that with a remote workforce that effort is increased.  You need to be more astute, more available and more willing to put the effort in than if your team is sat next to you.  You lose so many of the visual and social clues that a good manager uses every day to gauge the health of its team that you need to compensate in many other areas.  You also have to acknowledge that you're not likely to be as effective, it simply isn't possible.

You need to get imaginative about how you remain in contact, how you foster a team spirit and an emotional connection.  Technology plays a part, of course it does. Good collaboration tools with social media aspects make it possible to create social groups within your company and allow those people to seek out like minded individuals in a way that simply wasn't possible, or necessary, 10 years ago.  However, the technology isn't a panacea. You still need to create an environment in which people actually want to connect.  Without the right cultural context, you'll simply have a dead application

.

Still, the rules are simple and the techniques familiar.  There's nothing fundamentally different about managing a remote team, you're still dealing with people, after all.

If you honestly care about your role as a manager, a need to create a team that performs and are willing and able to put the time in, then you probably won't go far wrong.