SEP Blog

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 Named a Best Places to Work Company for 14th Consecutive Year

SEP has once again been recognized as one of Indiana’s Best Places to Work for the 14th year consecutive year.  The statewide survey and award program evaluates participating organizations and honors those with the highest levels of employee satisfaction and…
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The Anatomy of Event Storming

Here at SEP we are continually toying with practices to help us learn from our clients. Learn about their worlds. Learn about their problems. And in this case, learning about their domains. Event storming is a “cross-discipline conversation between stakeholders with different backgrounds” (from https://www.eventstorming.com/). Said another way…event storming is an activity that we use as […]
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Storylines: A Tale of Two Products

So, you say you want to build a product? Awesome. How do you get started? In the Days of Yore Day 1 Some people used to (and sometimes, still do) get dozens of people in a room and author this 200 page document that has a bulleted list of statements of what the software should […]
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Meet the Software Producer

It isn’t every day that a new title is introduced around here. And I get to have the fun of helping define it, because I’m one of the few on the block with that new title: Software Producer. Why do we need a new title? SEP grew out of an engineering focus from its inception. Do the […]
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Diagnose, Deliver, Delight

Burger King used to have a marketing campaign for “Have It Your Way”. For a restaurant setting, it’s nice to be able to customize the normal menu for our tastes. But what does “Have It Your Way” really mean for our software clients? What’s on the menu for a successful project? Diagnose the Problem When […]
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Beware of Assumptions

We’ve all created a persona. We spend time empathizing with this future user of our product to ensure we see the product and experience through their eyes. We think through and focus on their skill sets, goals, opinions, biases, and limitations. We think though all the things a user might not even be aware they […]
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Beware of the Simple Things

Beware of the Simple Things: 3 Flags to Look Out for in Domains Your new client already has a requirements document, and has been doing work in the domain for 10 years. They use simple concepts: reports, studies, projects, updates, project IDs, owners. They ‘just’ want to transfer their Access data into a relational database, […]
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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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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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Changing Plans

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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