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. In 2004, we began using Agile practices. In 2007, I introduced Kanban and eventually lean. These practices helped us to become more predictable, more reliable, and produce higher quality software for less money. Our customers will tell you that we are very good at what we do. Even so, I feel there is more we can do to help our customers build great products.
All of these newly introduced practices did very little to ensure we were building the right product. And, like the pizza delivery guy, on-time and predictable is great, but it’s what inside the box you care about.
So, over the last year and a half, SEP has spent considerable time considering this idea. We feel that it’s imperative to not only build great software, but to help our clients ensure they are building the “right” product.
Over the next several blog posts, I am going to talk about the why, how, and what SEP is doing in this area of product design to specifically help our customers achieve greater success.
