Introduction

NOTE

Position of this chapter:

This chapter presents the overall picture of Project Sprint and how to approach this body of documents as a whole.
You cannot grasp Project Sprint by understanding individual techniques one at a time. It is understood by moving back and forth between experience, assumptions, and structure.
This chapter therefore shows the order in which to approach each element, and lays out a path toward understanding and practice.
If you have not yet experienced Project Sprint, you will gain a deeper understanding by going through the Workshop first and then rereading these documents.

Authors' intent:

• Show how the three elements of Project Sprint (the Workshop, CODE, and the Practical Guide) relate to one another, and lay out the order in which understanding and practice should proceed.
• Present the ideas and values behind Project Sprint, and the kind of world it aims for.

Value for the reader:

• By understanding the overall picture of Project Sprint and how to approach it, you can judge for yourself what to read now and what kind of practice to undertake.
• You will be able to make sense of your own experience in light of what Project Sprint values, and to grasp what that experience is worth.

1. What Project Sprint Means by "Project"

In these documents, the word "project" rests on assumptions that differ somewhat from the conventional ones.

A project is commonly understood as an activity in which a plan is executed toward a goal, or a "right answer," fixed in advance. Real projects, however, exist in uncertain situations, and their environment and requirements keep changing. The assumptions and plans made at the outset therefore often cannot be executed as written.

In Project Sprint, a project is an activity in which the members themselves decide, amid a constantly changing situation, how to bring their work to a temporary settling point (what these documents call convergence), and then find the next direction from the results.

A project is not something given in advance; it is something deliberately carved out. And its goal is not fixed; the team updates it, as the team's will takes shape through action and dialogue.

As you read these documents, please think of a project not as something that moves toward a fixed right answer, but as an activity that discovers value and direction in response to the situation.

2. What Project Sprint Is Trying to Change

The world is in a state of uncertainty, and so is each project we face. Environments and requirements keep changing, and the future cannot be fully predicted.

The conventional view of projects has tried to cope with this uncertainty by making "more accurate plans." Defining the right answer in advance and executing it efficiently was regarded as project success.
On this premise, the plan always comes before reality, and action is merely its execution. In reality, however, the premises of a plan collapse easily, and the project is forced to revise it again and again. Eventually, maintaining the plan becomes an end in itself, and the project loses any real sense of moving forward.

Perhaps the problem lies not in the accuracy of the plan, but in how we see the project itself.
Project Sprint turns this view of projects around.

In Project Sprint, a project is not an activity that executes a right answer fixed in advance. It is an activity that updates understanding through action and discovers value amid uncertainty. In other words, a project is exploration. In exploration, the plan is only a starting point, and progress comes from action. Action, and the output it produces (output, in Project Sprint, is the act of producing something and bringing it into the open), generate new understanding and make the next decision possible.

This is where the "individual" involved in the project comes to matter. Each person has different experience, knowledge, and interests, and any understanding of the world is always personal and partial. There is a limit to the reality a single person can grasp. In uncertain situations, this limit becomes the limit of the project itself. For a project to move in a better direction, it therefore needs to take in diverse perspectives rather than a single one.

Project Sprint assumes that each member brings their own differing perceptions and sensibilities into the project through action and output, and that these are then integrated through dialogue. When diverse individuals take part in exploration from their own perspectives, the project is not confined to a single understanding, and moves toward realizing richer value.

Members, then, are not merely people who carry out a role. Each is an agent who acts on their own interests, unease, and insights, and brings the results into the project. Project Sprint presupposes this kind of self-directed action by each individual. Exploration by the project as a whole happens only when members use their abilities and take part in exploration of their own accord.

On these assumptions, Project Sprint reconstructs the way a project is run. It is a shift from a project that delivers value defined in advance to one that keeps exploring value. The purpose of a project is not to answer the question posed at the outset. It is to keep updating the question itself through action and output, while moving toward whatever value seems best at that point in time. What matters in a project is therefore not conformity to the plan, but continually updating the question and the purpose as the situation changes.

Project Sprint is not a method for running projects well. It is a framework that changes how we see projects, and that deals with the very process by which people and teams bring value into being.

3. The Value Project Sprint Provides

To move a project forward in uncertain situations, Project Sprint builds in a rhythm of two activities: exploration and convergence.
Exploration is the activity of understanding the situation through action and widening the range of possibilities.
Convergence is the activity of setting the direction of the next action on the basis of what exploration has produced.
Through this succession of exploration and convergence, a project moves forward while gradually sharpening its focus.

What Project Sprint offers is this: through the structure of repeated exploration and convergence, the project keeps moving forward, and an environment arises in which people can collaborate autonomously. Once a team understands and practices Project Sprint, the very way its project proceeds changes.

First, the project begins to move forward through output rather than through plans.
The artifacts and insights produced as the result of individual action become the primary information with which the team understands the world, and the basis for the next decision. Rather than tracing a plan made in advance, the project proceeds from the output of exploration, updating its understanding through periodic convergence. The information gained through action then gives direction to the next decision. Rather than being fixed in advance as a right answer, the direction ahead becomes gradually clear through actual action and its results.

The way people engage with the project also changes.
Project Sprint presupposes that diverse members take part in exploration autonomously, each from their own perspective. Each person has different experience and interests and grasps the world in a different way. In uncertain situations, this very diversity is what widens the project's understanding. When multiple perspectives are brought to bear on a reality that no single perspective can fully grasp, the project moves in a direction the team is convinced is better. In today's projects, diversity is not an option but a given, and whether it can be put to use determines how the project turns out. Project Sprint enables each member to act from their own perspective and bring the results into the project. This allows the project to move toward the realization of value as a whole team, without depending on any particular individual or role.

The way decisions are made changes as well.
In Project Sprint, decisions are made on the basis of conviction (nattoku: being able to feel, on your own grounds, that this is good) rather than correctness. Rather than seeking the one right answer, it values a state in which the team is able to take on the next action. Decision-making based on conviction draws out self-directed action from members. When people are convinced by their own judgment, they can take on the action as their own. As a result, a team emerges that moves autonomously rather than being driven by control.

Through these changes, Project Sprint transforms the project from "something that executes a plan" into "something that keeps discovering value through exploration."

4. How to Experience, Understand, and Practice Project Sprint

Understanding Project Sprint does not come from reading alone. Its value is recognized only through action and experience.
Project Sprint therefore recommends proceeding, wherever possible, in the following order.

• Workshop: experience the rhythm of exploration and convergence
• CODE: put the experience into words and understand it as a structure
• Practical Guide: apply it to real projects

In the Workshop, you actually experience the cycle of exploration and convergence in a project.
You may not be able to put this experience into clear words, but it stays with you as a felt sense gained through action and its results.

CODE exists to give meaning to that experience.
CODE puts into words what was happening in the Workshop and reframes it as the assumptions and structure of Project Sprint, so that you can reinterpret the experience.

The Practical Guide exists to connect that understanding to practice.
It shows concretely how to act and how to proceed in a real project.

This order is based not merely on learning efficiency, but on the very assumptions of Project Sprint. People do not first understand the meaning fully and only then act. Understanding arises only from experiencing action and its results, and interpreting them afterwards.
First comes experience, and understanding follows. Project Sprint is designed in this order.
Through this flow, Project Sprint is understood not as knowledge, but as a framework that actually works.

5. The Design Philosophy and Structure of CODE

Project Sprint is not meant to be adopted wholesale as a set of procedures. It takes effect only when it is accepted with an understanding of the thinking behind it.
Project Sprint can be applied in many settings, but its effect depends on how far the underlying assumptions and thinking are shared.
If only the structure is introduced, without the assumptions behind it, a gap can open between the structure and the way the project is actually run, and its effect may not be fully realized.

With this in mind, CODE puts the thinking and structure of Project Sprint into words.
It is not, however, a theory to be understood first and applied afterwards. CODE presupposes that you have experienced the Workshop. Its role is to give meaning to that experience, to let you see what was happening there as a structure, and at the same time to present the underlying assumptions and thinking and to provide criteria for judgment in practice.

CODE therefore presents not only the theory and structure of Project Sprint, but also the thinking that underlies them.

Note that CODE is divided into three Steps, ordered by the depth of understanding each requires and by the difficulty of the practice it leads to.

Step0 deals with the individual acting on their own initiative and updating their understanding of the world through output.
Step1 deals with multiple individuals forming a shared understanding through output and dialogue, and carrying exploration forward as a team.
Step2 deals with how, as a result of that exploration, the team generates value and brings change to society.
(Step2 will be written in v5.1 or later and is not included as of v5.0.)

Project Sprint has a structure that begins with individual action, passes through exploration as a team, and arrives at the realization of value. This document is organized so that this process can be understood step by step.

6. What We Expect of Readers After Reading CODE

When you finish reading these documents, you will not have fully understood Project Sprint. Nor is the aim for you to be able to apply what is written here exactly as it stands.

What these documents give you is a perspective for grasping what is happening in a project.
You will be able to put into words, and understand, the structure behind what you experienced in the Workshop and what happens in your actual projects.

These documents also provide criteria for judgment in practice. What should be prioritized in a project? How should decisions be made? How should one relate to other members? They do not give a single right answer to these questions, but they give you a basis for thinking about them, grounded in the assumptions of Project Sprint.

As a result, you will be able to treat Project Sprint not as a mere technique, but as a framework you can interpret, choose from, and apply according to the situation. Project Sprint is not something you use after understanding it. It is something you understand more deeply the more you use it. These documents provide the footing on which that understanding can take shape.

Let us begin, then, with Step0, which focuses on the most basic unit in Project Sprint: the individual.