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 Winning Company in the 2022 Powderkeg Unvalley Awards

Westfield, IN - January 2022, SEP, a software product design and development firm has been announced as a winning company in the 2022 Powderkeg Unvalley Awards. This recognizes SEP as one of the best tech companies to work for in…
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What is DevOps?

What is DevOps? The word DevOps is a clipped version of the words Development and Operations [1]. What does development mean? Development is the process of designing, building and testing software. This includes product design user experience, software architecture, software design and coding. What does operations mean? The term operations describes the process of building […]
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How deep is your Kanban implementation?

Recently a co-worker and I had a brief discussion about whether we were using Kanban, or simply using a “task board” for visualizing our work. Kanban is so much more than only a board with columns, stickie notes, and scribbles all over the place. Kanban is a method, or an approach, to incrementally change/improve your […]
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Can you measure “quality”? (spoiler – yes you can!)

There are 3 main questions that I need to be able to answer in order to monitor a project. How many “thingies” can we get done each iteration? – a.k.a. Velocity yep, “thingies” is a technical term…the units of measure are neither man-days nor gummy-bears…they are just thingies how long will it take me to […]
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Interview with SEP TeamWorks Founder Adam Scroggin

As Engineering Manager at Software Engineering Professionals (SEP), Adam Scroggin was in search of a better user experience with digital Kanban. The method his teams were using was needlessly complicated by its overly basic interface. Minute details were hard to follow in readouts more similar to spreadsheets than clean Kanban boards. Adam found himself with […]
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Kanban in daily life

What is Kanban? Read about it at Wikipedia. Basically, it’s a method of visual process management. Often, Post-it Notes are used to signify tasks and they are put on a board with columns to identify each task’s state: ready to do, in process, needs, review, completed, etc. Kanban has made its mark on SEP, showing up in […]
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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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The 30 Second Standup

Originally posted on Matt Swanson’s website 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. […]
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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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Chris Shinkle Nominated for 2013 Brickell Key Award

Software Engineering Professionals (SEP) Director of Innovation Chris Shinkle has been nominated as one of six finalists for the 2013 Brickell Key Award. Awarded to two worthy individuals every year at the Lean Kanban North America Conference (LKNA), the Brickell Award recognizes those demonstrating outstanding achievement, leadership, and contribution to the Lean and Kanban community. […]
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Chris Shinkle Talking Kanban

Our very own Chris Shinkle will be talking Kanban a couple times in the next few weeks: November 12th at the SQE Agile Development Practices Conference in Orlando, FL November 18th at QCon in San Francisco Check him out if you get a chance … he’s had some great experiences with Kanban here at SEP, […]
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