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 Wins TechPoint’s 2024 Innovation Service Partner of the Year Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Innovation Service Partner, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana – SEP has been named the Innovation Service Partner of the Year by TechPoint at the 25th annual Mira Awards. The Mira Awards, Indiana’s largest…
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3Q Book Review: The Logic of Failure

The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner What’s the point? The premise of the book is that humans are notoriously bad at thinking through complex systems. We can’t plan or predict well and we don’t manage them well once we’re entangled in them. He presents a number of studies (real life and experiments) to explore […]
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The file exists

Maybe I should title this post ‘How to write a better error message’ instead. I just went on a wild goose chase trying to find the solution to an error I kept seeing in SQL Server Management Studio every time I tried to run a query or open a table for editing (or anything else […]
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3Q Book Review: Linchpin

I really hate opening a blog post and seeing that it’s five pages long, 7 point font, dense text. Even if the author is awesome, it’s asking me to make a relatively big commitment. I’ll try not to be part of the problem … from now on, I’m going to do any book reviews in […]
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Story Mapping – Getting Started

In our recent training, Jeff Patton presented a structured discovery process centered around the story map and personas, neatly packaged into about a week of time. Some people in the training were worried that their clients wouldn’t be willing to commit this. Let’s tackle this from two angles: how to get a client to the […]
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group of hands clinking champagne glasses and holding sparklers

SEP is an ESOP! OMG!

I’ve known about this for a couple months, but it’s still pretty awesome now that it is happening. As of March 31, SEP now has an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. This means that over the next 15+ years, ownership of the company will slowly transition to the employees. We will not buy the stock … […]
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Story Mapping

We recently completed several days of training with the fabulous Jeff Patton. At a 10,000 foot level, the techniques he talked about focus on getting the whole story on a project you are considering doing. Most agile and lean techniques are all about building better software faster, rather than building the right software. This is […]
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Can it get any cooler over here???

Just had to brag about this company a little bit… https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=40993 The managers at this company care about their people, and this is just one more way they show it. This company just keeps getting better each year! Amazing! Currently thinking:  Spring is here, softball starts this week, and my company just keeps getting better!
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SEP Announced Launch of Employee Stock Ownership Plan

Carmel, IN, April 5, 2010 –Software Engineering Professionals™ (SEP) announced to its employees today that the owners have transferred 100% of SEP’s stock to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) established for the benefit of the employees. Jeff Gilbert, President & CEO, said “This has been a long term goal for me. We searched for […]
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Usability, and more…

Last week, we had 3 days of training.  Jeff Patton came in to talk to us about usability, and how to work with our clients to make sure we produce something they actually need.  He introduced ideas and concepts that weren’t entirely new…he simply put the ideas and concepts together in a process that makes […]
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