CARMEL, Ind. – Carmel-based software product design and development company, Software Engineering Professionals (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 and clients advantage. The acquisition will enable SEP to expand its global footprint into a number of new countries.
“We are thrilled about the opportunity to continue to grow the CardBoard product and brand,” said Jeff Gilbert, founder and CEO of SEP. “We know this tool is important to the agile software development industry, and we are committed to collaborating with DevJam during the transitionary period to ensure a smooth transfer of ownership.”
CardBoard was first launched in August of 2012 by DevJam and now has more than 13,000 users in 47 states and 90 countries. The visual outlining tool helps distributed development teams make cohesive journey maps, allowing users to visualize designs, whether together or apart. Moving forward, SEP will be actively involved with the CardBoard community, sourcing customer needs and ideas, and listening for any improvement suggestions.
“We have recognized SEP’s approach to learning about customer needs in order to build a better user experience. Their agile engineering team has our complete trust and confidence. We know the product is in good hands, and will see continued growth.” said David Hussman, founder of DevJam and CardBoard. “I’m positive that current customers will see the same or greater level of customer interaction moving forward.”
CardBoard’s intuitive user experience promotes storytelling as a product discovery tool. It easily connects to various tracking tools like JIRA, VersionOne and Pivotal Tracker, and allows users to visualize product progress by toggling status on or off as a way to plan.
Director of innovation at SEP, Chris Shinkle, says he’s “excited to work with an industry-changing product like CardBoard. SEP’s staff of more than 100 engineers will be more responsive than ever to your requests in order to provide the best customer experience and continued the growth of this product. We’re looking forward to putting more marketing and development behind what we believe is an industry-leading product, with hopes it will truly revolutionize story mapping beyond the agile dev environment.”
This announcement comes on the heels of the opening of the company's product design studio, an immersive environment created to assist in the development of software products and information systems for businesses. To learn more about CardBoard visit cardboardit.com or meet with the team at Mile High Agile or Keep Austin Agile.
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About SEP:
SEP partners with companies to develop software products and information systems that solve complex problems, building products that impact people’s lives. Started in 1988 and headquartered in Carmel, Ind., Software Engineering Professionals (SEP) was created by four Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology graduates. SEP serves Fortune and Global 1000 clients as well as mid-sized and startup companies. SEP is one of Indiana’s largest software development firms with more than 100 employees. The company is 100 percent employee-owned through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and has made the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s Best Places to Work list for seven consecutive years (2010 ranked #1). To learn more, visit sep.com.
About CardBoard:
CardBoard is a collaborative design tool born out of endless work with distributed teams looking to make connections. Our tagline speaks for itself: “If Google Docs and Post It Notes had a kid, it would look like CardBoard.” Anytime dev teams need to visualize their design, whether together or apart, CardBoard’s a simple and fast user experience focuses on promoting discussion for better product storytelling. CardBoard is easily connected to various tracking tools like JIRA, VersionOne and Pivotal Tracker. Once connected, users can visualize product progress by toggling status on or off as a way to plan and re-plan as needed. To learn more, visit cardboardit.com.