
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 2025 Exceptional Employer Mira Award
SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Tech Employer, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named Exceptional Employer by TechPoint at the 26th annual Mira Awards. This award recognizes companies that are developing talent through skills-based hiring…
Read Full Post

I want to share a client project in the form of a journal entry after you have a chance to gloss over the infographic. The focus is on how our team was formed and how we managed roles and responsibility for design in a new way. I had a hard time writing this post at […]
Read Full Post

Challenge Your Favorites
I’ve written about the many benefits of personal projects before. One nice aspect is being able to try out tools & frameworks in a low-risk environment. In this post I’ll explain one such trial I’m doing and how the tool Comby made switching easy. Are My Go-To Tools Stale? As we gain experience on projects […]
Read Full Post

Five Decisions Your Team Needs to Make Before Starting a Project
Huzzah! You got the project! Now what!? Here are some recommendations on what decisions you should make right now, before you start. 1. What’s the tech? Let’s start with the obvious one. Assuming you’ve decided to write some software, you’ll have to decide how to write it. Which programming language? Is your team going to […]
Read Full Post

What Really Matters
On November 1st, the project I had been working on for seven years ended. It was an incredibly rewarding professional and technical experience. I learned what it was like to integrate into a large company and dozens of other development teams. I worked in technologies I had never worked in before, and on a code […]
Read Full Post

Facilitation: Don’t Lose Before You Start
So you want to facilitate a workshop for a team? Maybe you’re external to the team and have been asked to help by facilitating. Awesome, it’ll be fun. Just show up at the time and place annnnnnnd you’ve already lost. You better think (think) Think about what you’re trying to do — Aretha Franklin Ask […]
Read Full Post
Five Things I Learned Working with Software Engineers
Introduction Hi, I’m Jordan Thayer, and I’m a research scientist by training. I got my PhD in 2012 from the University of New Hampshire, where I focused on Artificial Intelligence. My undergraduate degree was in Computer Science too; I got that from Rose-Hulman back in 2006. I’ve been programming things for about as long as […]
Read Full Post

Did the 1973 Oil Crisis Create Lean Software Development?
US car companies were booming in the early 1970’s. Americans loved big cars and had cash to buy them. Demand for oil rose so quickly that, by 1969, the US began importing oil. Not long after, oil exporting nations began using US dependence on their oil to influence US foreign policy. During the first embargo […]
Read Full Post

Building a Circle of Support: Letting others in, being vulnerable, and gaining self – awareness
Cue the “Meet the Parents” meme… We’ve all seen it, the awkward moment where Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro are in the dressing room and good ol’ future father-in-law is accusing Ben Stiller’s character of nefarious acts: CIRCLE OF TRUST The thing I love about that scene is someone caring about another person enough […]
Read Full Post

Pulling the Andon Cord
In the manufacturing world, the Andon cord obligates anybody who spots a problem to stop production. Anybody. Andon cords are a part of the Toyota Production System. The Andon cord is a simple rope that extends the length of the production line. (Black/yellow cords in the picture above) Pulling the rope stops production. Toyota not […]
Read Full Post