Key Terms

NOTE

Position of this chapter:

This chapter gives the definitions of the main terms used in Project Sprint.
Some of these terms are used with nuances that differ from their everyday meaning. They are presented here as the reference point for reading these documents with a consistent understanding.

Authors' intent:

Define the meaning of the key concepts used in Project Sprint, and prevent the interpretation of terms from drifting.

Value for the reader:

Understand precisely the concepts that matter when reading CODE, and read the words used in these documents with a common understanding of what they mean.

• Team: A group of members who share a common purpose, take part in a standing meeting within a project, and produce output toward that purpose.
• Project team: A group of members who hold a shared understanding of the project's purpose and collaborate autonomously toward achieving it. A project team is a kind of team, with two exceptions: it may have no standing meeting in which all members take part, and it may include advisory members who do not produce output.
• Project: An activity that a project team undertakes of its own accord in order to bring some change or value to society outside the project.
• Activity: An embodied action, taken with will and purpose by a team or a member, aimed at changing one state into another. An activity always includes output.
• Output: The act by which a project member takes action and produces an artifact.
• Outcome: A change that the team has brought about inside or outside the project as the result of output; a result on the way to realizing value.
• Value: The meaning or benefit that external stakeholders recognize in the project's outcomes.
• Artifact: Something with a concrete form, produced by a team member and shared with the team, that other members can interpret and respond to.

TIP

Translator's notes on terms

The eight definitions above are the authors' own. The notes below are the translators' and explain how a few Japanese terms were rendered in this English edition, so that the same English word always points to the same idea.

• Output (出力) is an act: acting, producing something, and bringing it into the open where others can see it. When the text needs the thing produced, it says artifact (作成物). "What you output" is used where the Japanese refers to the product of that act.
• Outcome (成果) is a change that has appeared in the world; it is never used for "deliverable."
• Exploration and convergence (探索 / 収束) are the two activities whose alternation drives a project. Convergence means bringing the widened understanding to a temporary settling point so that the next action can begin; it does not mean "finishing."
• Conviction (納得, nattoku) is a state in which a person, on grounds of their own, is able to feel that something is good, and can therefore take on an action as their own. It is not certainty of being right, and not mere agreement or compliance.
• Shared understanding (共通了解, kyōtsū ryōkai) does not mean that members hold identical understanding. It is a state in which members, while holding different understandings, grasp one another's thinking and situation roughly enough to act together.
• Agent (主体) is a person who acts on their own initiative and takes on the results, as opposed to someone who merely carries out instructions.
• Take on (引き受ける) means to accept an action or its result as one's own, by one's own will.
• Standing meeting (会議体) is a meeting that exists as a continuing institution of the project, with its own members and rhythm, rather than a single meeting occasion. "Standing" here means "permanent," as in "standing committee"; it has nothing to do with standing up, and a standing meeting is not a stand-up meeting. The regular meeting (定例会議) is the recurring occasion on which that standing meeting is held.
• Harvest festival (収穫祭) is the authors' image for the regular meeting: a place where the results of everyone's actions are gathered in and given meaning, rather than reported and judged.
• Reflection (振り返り) is the team's process of giving meaning to past output and insights in order to turn toward the future; it is close to, but broader than, a retrospective.
• Differentiation and integration (分化と統合): members diverge as each explores on their own, then integrate what they found through dialogue.
• Unease (違和感) is the sense that something is off; insight (気づき) is a realization gained in the course of acting. Both are treated as information for the project.