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 2025 Exceptional Employer Mira Award
SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Tech Employer, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana – SEP has been named Exceptional Employer by TechPoint at the 26th annual Mira Awards. This award recognizes companies that are developing talent through skills-based hiring…
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This post originally appeared on Ryan’s personal blog The unlikely programmer Music theory was my ‘thing’ from the time I was 10, so naturally that’s what I studied in college. Years later I found programming and, realizing a better thing when I saw one, I switched ‘things.’ After attending the Institute of Whatever the Search […]
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SEP Partners with Gleaners to Provide Food for Hungry Hoosiers
One in eight Hoosiers struggles with hunger. Gleaners Food Bank was founded in 1980 with the simple mission to fight this crisis. Annually, more than 260,000 Indiana residents receive assistance from Gleaners Food Bank, of which more than 30,000 are seniors and nearly 100,000 are children. That’s why the work Gleaners does in 21 counties […]
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Collaboration versus Competition part 2
In my previous post I discussed the problem of expecting a candidate with a competitive mindset to work in a collaborative environment. This time I would like to focus on the experiences that have led to a successful integration. I ended with a few notes on Team-Think. The goal of Team-Think is to alter the […]
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Builds should fail sometimes
Reposted from my personal blog “Well, you don’t want your builds to succeed all the time…” I remember hearing that for the first time a year or two ago and thinking to myself “that’s probably one of those counter-intuitive truths that make a lot of sense in the context of Agile. This guy is probably some kind […]
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Collaboration versus Competition
Working with others is never easy. It takes hard work and the proper mindset to accomplish. This is a lesson taught to small children with varying degrees of success. I learned from an early age that sharing was important. I was taught to play well with others and to understand that others have needs that […]
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Tech Lead Training
One of the goals that I have set for myself over the past several years was to start to train engineers in a semiformal manner. This goal would accomplish a few things: Long term team viability Not everyone will want to stay on the same project long term Not everyone will want to stay on […]
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[Review] Agile Estimating and Planning
Agile Estimating and Planning, a book written by Mike Cohn (who writes an excellent blog you should all follow), is the de facto “classic” book for learning about Agile Planning. With great examples, illustrations for learning, and just the right amount of detail, Agile Estimating and Planning is a book I’ll be coming back to […]
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Running Lean Startup Experiments Internally
When building a business or software, it is easy to make assumptions about what the market will want or how users will interact with your product. Recently, the concept of the Lean Startup Experiment has emerged to help us explicitly acknowledge these assumptions and construct small experiments to validate our assumptions. Here at SEP, we […]
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SEP History Lesson: When an Enthusiastic Newbie Convinced Us to Get a Fish Tank
I’ve had several people tell me they liked the new fishtank design (thank you!), and it was suggested that I do a write-up about the tank. I’m always happy to talk about it! I’ll start with some history… How it Began It all started around 10 years ago. I was interviewing for a position at SEP, […]
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