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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SEP product development team collaborating with whiteboard

Common Elements of an SEP Project Team Area

We often get asked what a typical team setup looks like at SEP. We think these elements help to make our project, client, product, and employee experience better. Kanban Board We like to use physical kanban boards to track work so everyone can see the big picture from 10 feet away. The ability to visualize […]

New Leads Need to be Replaceable

The title I wanted… “New leads will want to have a succession plan in place from day 1 because it’s so much harder to detach yourself from the project if you start thinking about it on day 500” … but it didn’t fit in the character limit, so here we are. Replaceability Replaceable 👏 does […]

Woman balancing project responsibilities

New Leads Need “Domains of Execution”

Okay, sure the title really needs to be “New leads should totally define a list of clusters of responsibilities that every project has so that they can make sure the project is appropriately supported” …but you get it. What’s a “Domain of Execution”? A domain is some cluster of responsibilities that your project will require […]

New Leads Need to Give Real-Time Permission

Okay, okay, so the title should really be “New Leads (probably) Need to Practice Real-Time Permission (if they’re still uncomfortable with conflict, especially when a power dynamic is involved)”, but I feel like you get it. Where does “Real-Time Permission” come from? “Real-Time Permission” is a concept I barely acknowledged when I first read Patrick […]

New Leads Need Self Directed Radical Candor

Hello! If you are new to Radical Candor, check out the concept directly from Kim Scott herself, Radical Candor in 6 minutes I should also mention that the title should really be “new leads who are terrible at thinking on their feet in front of a crowd need self directed radical candor.” It’s just… not […]

New Leads Need to Prep for Staffing Conversations

One of the things I did terribly as a new lead was participate in staffing conversations for my team. Mainly, I was just unprepared in realizing the scope of what adding or removing a person meant on the distribution of responsibilities that a single team has to balance. In this blog post, you’ll find a […]

New Leads Need “That’s Not My Oven!”

If your job was installing an oven in a kitchen, and on the day you do your install the electrician hasn’t installed an electrical socket where the oven’s supposed to go, you wouldn’t run an extension cord just to get your oven to work. You’d tell the foreman you’ll come back when they’re ready for […]

New Leads Need The Engagement Chronicle

On the last day of a 20 month-long project, my customer asked me, “Could you give a brief overview of everything you guys have done for us over the last couple of years?” 😅 As a new lead, I hadn’t thought of starting an engagement chronicle until closer to the end of the project. By […]

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 […]

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, […]

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