four-jects
Four-jects
Four-jects
Project
- Pro + ject: an activity to move forward
- Consists of project management based on allocated resources, plus teamwork by either static or fluid members
- A temporary endeavor that always has a beginning and an end
Transject
- Trans + ject: an activity to cross boundaries
- Consists of solo work that produces shareable deliverables, broadcasting them to all employees, and handling individual Q&A and requests
- A permanent endeavor: you keep operating as an individual player without having a team or a project
Preject
- Pre + ject: activities performed before a project
- Not Waterfall, not Agile, but exploratory. You decide only a theme and a timebox; during that period, each person explores freely without management, meetings, or interference
- A temporary endeavor: once it ends, you immediately share results, run a retrospective, and decide what comes next
Coject
- Co + ject: an activity to spend time together
- During work hours, you do non-work social activities such as conversations, games, retreats, and other recreation
- A temporary endeavor: you inject the human interactions people need as appropriate
Relationships
- 1
- If you need exploration before starting a Project, do a Preject. Exploration works better when you remove constraints as much as possible and let each person go all-in on their own pace and strengths, with deep focus. It doesn’t fit well with a management-heavy, teamwork-heavy Project.
- 2
- To move forward, you need a Project
- 3
- A Project is teamwork-oriented, and it often carries unnecessary communication and social interaction
- Normally, you should keep that to the minimum. But because we’re human, we can’t endure that alone, so you introduce Cojects. The idea is to do them at a high density separately. In other words, separate project activities from social activities
- 4
- The talent for solving problems and the talent for defining problems can’t coexist. A Solver should do Projects, but it’s absurd to make a Creator do Projects. Also, there are quite a lot of people who aren’t suited to being Solvers, likely as many as sexual minorities and neurodivergent people, or even more
- Exempt the latter from Projects and have them fully commit to Transjects instead. And to ensure their outcomes get brought into Projects, also provide (have them provide) sustained delivery
Organized with matrices
Matrix 1:
| Temporary | Permanent | |
|---|---|---|
| Move forward | Project | - |
| Explore | Preject,Coject | Transject |
Matrix 2:
| Solo | Team | |
|---|---|---|
| Move forward | - | Project |
| Explore | Tranject | Preject |