Strategy & Innovation 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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graphic of iceberg above and below water line

Course Correction: Beware of Icebergs

A coworker and I were discussing issues that impact a project’s delivery or feature set. While throwing ideas around, I mentioned that we get hit by icebergs that disrupt our flow. He said, “What’s an iceberg?” Knowledge Iceberg When I typically think of an iceberg on a project, I think of a feature or epic […]
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post it notes on a whiteboard

Getting the Most Value with a Development Partner

What is software development? 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 value before the project is initiated? If the initial estimated cost versus the expected value (Rate […]
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Ride the Wave

The more things change… The beginning of summer at SEP usually means new hires.  While a few newbs come from other companies with experience already (so they aren’t really newbs), a lot we hire come fresh out of college.  Thus, our vernacular: “Fresh Out” (noun) A new employee to the company, hired directly after they […]
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The 30 Second Standup

The Three Pillars of Standup Meetings: What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? What is blocking your progress? Everyone stands in a circle and takes their turn answering the questions. The whole meeting should last only a few minutes and gets everyone of the same page. But when you consider all the […]
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SEP Recipient of 2013 NCEO Innovations Award

News Release — May 8, 2013 On Thursday, April 25, the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) and the Beyster Institute at UCSD’s Rady School of Management announced the winners of the 2013 Excellence in Ownership Awards. The Excellence in Ownership Award Program consists of three awards: the Working Better Award, recognizing companies that develop […]
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POP for Prototyping

Do you POP?  Maybe you should.  It’s a free prototyping app, currently available for iPhone but soon to be released for Android. POP is a super simple way to capture your wonderful pencil scratchings electronically and create a semi-functional wireframe that you can share with others. POP uses the camera on your phone (or existing […]
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My Ideal Software Project: 7 Values I Believe In…

At SEP, we have very diverse teams, clients, and projects. With all of that variety and diversity, comes a lot of variation in how projects are run. Almost every project, in my experience, has used different processes and techniques. I was recently inspired by one of my coworkers, Jennifer, by a letter that she wrote […]
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Changing Plans – Blog Jam

There is some friction between agile methodologies and the desire for upfront formal requirements that has really been bugging me lately. I often find myself wanting to have my cake and eat it too: I want clear and final requirements, but I don’t want to be forced to design an entire system upfront and drown […]
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Default Value

In .NET we’ve got this cool little language construct called default, that’ll give you the default value for any given type.  That is, null, for any reference type, or zero/false/DateTime.Min/etc. for value types. Here it is in action (nothing amazing going on here): var x =default(DateTime); So what if you don’t know the type you […]
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