SEP Alumni

Our industry often sets its context too small to address the question of why software is so expensive. While addressing costs, we missed optimizing the other side of the equation – VALUE. To move to a new level of optimization, we need to expand the context of our development process to engage more of the […]

The Lean Software and Systems Consortium conference in Atlanta left me with a lot to think about. My main reason to go was to learn more about becoming a more agile enterprise but that is a topic for another day. To summarize my previous post, software projects are often categorized as “too expensive”.  However, it […]

Last week, we had 3 days of training.  Jeff Patton came in to talk to us about usability, and how to work with our clients to make sure we produce something they actually need.  He introduced ideas and concepts that weren’t entirely new…he simply put the ideas and concepts together in a process that makes […]

We recently used Balsamiq Mockups to redesign a set of web pages.  I’ve done a lot of designs on paper, in HTML, using FrontPage and even Visio before, and now I know, I was doing it the hard way every time. Balsamiq offers a way to present user interface designs quickly and easily.  It has […]

There have been many papers, studies, books, etc. on the high cost of developing software. What does this even mean? When we say software we typically mean a software product to sell to a market or a system to increase productivity. In both cases doesn’t the customer have some idea of the cost and potential […]