Practices Articles

We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.

SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2024 Innovation Service Partner of the Year Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Innovation Service Partner, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named the Innovation Service Partner of the Year by TechPoint at the 25th annual Mira Awards. The Mira Awards, Indiana’s largest…
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TDD and To-Do Lists

As I continue to experiment with TDD, I find that I often need to make notes to myself so that I don’t forget to come back and do something later, whether it be add a corner case test, refactor some code, or add another piece of functionality that I realized I need. It wasn’t until […]
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TDD Study Group: Week 1

As you’ve no doubt heard from another blog post/email/coworker if your an employee here at SEP, we’re beginning some TDD Study Groups here at SEP. One of the goals of the TDD Study Groups is to have some visible output from each of the groups, so we can spread some information further than just those […]
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Stop Doing Kanban! Start Learning

This is a session from the Lean Software and Systems Conference 2012 (LSSC12). Learning is the new currency. Practices and processes will come and go; only the wise survive. If you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, Kanban nor Lean, nor any other cool new thing will deliver the maximum benefit. And if […]
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One Small Step Toward TDD, One Small Leap for SEP

One small Step Toward TDD I have been reading about TDD and unit testing for about 7 years now and have not fully adopted TDD. It has a ton of time tested benefits including writing less production code, writing simpler code, making your code easier to change, making your code easier to test and the […]
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“Weapon of Choice” or Belt of Tools?

The title of the SEP Blog Battle for this week is “Weapon of Choice”, and I thought I’d provide what insights I have on the topic as it relates to Programming Langauges. Origins for this Post In an effort to more effectively convey my thoughts on the matter, I thought I would provide a precursor […]
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Being Present

As with any thought intensive job, there is a need for a certain level of intelligence place on the employee. However, in most of these cases, another attribute can be even more valuable than shear intelligence… being present. Of course, I don’t mean just showing up for work on time; I mean an employee who […]
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Engineering Over/Under: Finding Balance

The Blog Battle title for this week is “Engineering Over/Under”, and I thought I’d simply share my own experiences/inadequacies with this problem. As a young engineer (I am 23 and graduated roughly a year and a half ago), I have struggled much more with under-engineering, rather than over-engineering, but feel like I have some insights […]
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Developing Habits: Visualizing Daily Work

In a blog battle post earlier this week, I linked to a fairly old Lifehacker post on Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret – a simple means to visualize/motivate daily action on a specific type. Using a calendar, or a grid you can track the number of days you’ve completed your goal and, more importantly, the number of […]
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Lean or Kanban Will Not Save Us From Ourselves

Lean or Kanban will not save us from ourselves.  By themselves, they will not prevent us from producing software that does not deliver value to the end customer. SEP has spent the better part of 20 years getting good at software development.  Throughout those 20 years, SEP has sought to improve or methods and processes. […]
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