Collaboration Articles
Tearing Down the Silos: 3 Ways to Foster Better Collaboration
Collaboration between design and development has historically been an uphill battle. It used to be that a designer (or team of designers) designed a software application, and then handed it over the fence to the software engineers and wished them the best of luck. As you can imagine, this silo approach ended in unexpected results […]
BizOps at SEP
You may have heard of BizOps as a business function, but there’s a good chance you aren’t sure exactly what that looks like day-to-day, or specifically how that plays out at a custom software consultancy like SEP. This post will give you a glimpse into what BizOps looks like for us. The History of BizOps […]
Designer + Developer Collaboration
Context SEP started with developers, grew by hiring more developers, evolved by hiring designers. And since the developers “were here first,” there’s an easy and terrible potential for us to think of “incorporating designers into the development” rather than “incorporating developers into the designing.” My team chose a third way, which you all probably know […]
Design Studios With A Team
Why Use Design Studios? Design studios by definition vary from place to place and shift when the participant roles and sizes are different. Since design studios are used to culminate to a team-agreed user interface (or close to it) approach for a user story task(s), the scope can be altered, depending on the need. You […]
CommunityHERO: A Lesson in Collaborative Design
Here at SEP, the PXT (product experience team) has been making a push for more collaborative design on the projects we’ve been involved in. By collaborative design I mean including not only designers, but engineers, product owners, and project managers in the design process. We’ve had success with it on several of our past projects, […]
SEP Acquires Visual Story Mapping Software, CardBoard
CARMEL, Ind. (May 22, 2017) – Carmel-based software product design and development company, SEP, has acquired CardBoard, a collaborative design and story mapping tool. The product was previously owned by DevJam, a Minneapolis-based product development company that pragmatically uses agile/lean methods to their customers’ advantage. The acquisition will enable SEP to expand its global footprint […]
SEP Expands with Opening of New Software Product Design Studio
SEP expands with the opening of a new software product design studio CARMEL, Ind. (January 5, 2017) – SEP is expanding its Carmel, Ind., operations with the opening of the new SEP Product Design Studio. The new space is an immersive, collaborative environment designed to assist in the development of software products and information systems […]
Scaling Communication
This week, I was given a prompt asking “How do you communicate.” My first instinct was, “poorly.” Okay, that’s not strictly true. It’s more like, “obliquely.” I’m more comfortable with analogies than straight up saying, “it depends.” Don’t worry. I’m still going to tell you how to scale communication. Two kids sat down to play. […]
Why Perform Discovery (Envision) On the Front End of a Development Process?
The rapid evolution of technologies, users and markets has increased the pressure on the software industry to respond to industry criticisms. Some of these criticisms were well deserved and these three top the list: Why does it cost so much? Why does it take so long? Why can’t we get what we asked for? […]