Product Development Articles
How Product Discovery Maximizes Your Chances of Success
Savvy companies use product discovery to bring focus to new projects and during projects to shape upcoming releases. This helps design software for the three needs of effective products: Functionality: The software has the requested features, is well built, and maintainable. Business: The software is designed to accomplish specific business objectives. User: The software has […]
How a ‘Bucket of Hours’ Can Benefit Your Software Product Maintenance Plan
Why are we talking about software product maintenance plans? Maybe you just launched your latest killer app. Or maybe you have legacy software that it hasn’t stood the test of time. Wherever you are on the spectrum of very old to very new software, you would benefit from having a software product maintenance plan. Software […]
Think Software Maintenance is Expensive? Here’s Why It’s Worth the Investment.
The world of software and software development moves at lightning speed. Every day, new tools are introduced. Languages and frameworks are upgraded. App store requirements change. Operating systems are updated. New hardware is announced. So, what happens if the software world evolves but your software codebase doesn’t? Development Tools Chain Reaction Development tools continue to […]
A Matter of When, Not If
Prologue You are enjoying a brisk December evening by the fireplace. The tea in your cup warms your hands and fills your nose with fragrant aroma. Then you realize that Christmas is in a week. The Stories in our Heads Are you anxious? Maybe you don’t have time to get presents shipped in time. Maybe […]
Circumventing The Dark Side of Design
A Tale Old As Time Humans have had the tendency to be deceptive to one another for longer than any existing historical document can recall. One of the most infamous examples of this act being used as a literary device is the myth of the Trojan Horse in Homer’s Odyssey. This victory trophy, given to […]
Breadboarding: A Simple Way to Prototype
There is an awkwardness defining the solution for a software project. Some projects define the solution by generating a backlog of features to implement. They specify what should be built, but create few insights about the user’s experience. To bring in the user’s perspective, teams often start by emphasizing the visual experience with clickable prototypes. […]
A Pandemic Isn’t a Reason to Stop Researching (but… It Might Be a Good Reason to Start)
When it comes to doing user research, I’m always going to recommend learning with someone in their own space. Seeing someone use your product in their environment will always add more context to your investigation. Generally, research falls into these categories: exploratory/generative research (looking to understand problems, needs, goals, etc.) evaluative research (benchmarking your understanding, […]
3 Tools to Develop Your Agile Product Strategy
I recently had the opportunity to attend a webinar on agile product strategy given by our Director of Innovation, Chris Shinkle. Here are three tools I took away from the presentation that you can use to develop an agile product strategy that works. The Problem Do any of these situations sound familiar? Your product strategy […]
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 […]
SEP’s Jon Fuller Named 2017 TechPoint Tech 25 Award Winner
Director of Software Engineering Recognized for Impact on Indianapolis Tech Community Jon Fuller, Director of Software Engineering at SEP, has been named a 2017 TechPoint Tech 25 Award winner. This prestigious recognition celebrates twenty-five individuals who are critical and exceptional performers helping to grow Indiana’s tech and tech-enabled companies—leaders who don’t always receive the public […]
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 […]
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 […]