Between Sprint and Stillness

Notes on co-productive work between industry and research

I come from a work environment where progress is made visible quickly. For about ten years, I worked in web development, mostly in small Scrum teams: short cycles, clearly scoped tasks, regular coordination, and frequent intermediate results. Work produced artifacts early and often. Even when things were discarded, something usually remained: code, decisions, shared understanding.

Today, I work in research. I value the depth, the autonomy, and the long-term perspective this allows. At the same time, I notice how different the underlying logic of work is and how that difference becomes more noticeable over time.

This is not a critique of research. It is an attempt to describe a contrast shaped by different working histories.

Two modes of progress

In industrial team settings, progress tends to be incremental:

• small, well-defined tasks
• short feedback cycles
• regular synchronization
• visible intermediate artifacts

Progress is rarely final, but it is frequent. Work is embedded in a shared process, and movement is continuously reflected back to the team.

In research, progress is often latent:

• long phases of thinking and exploration
• highly individualized topics
• little day-to-day synchronization
• few but significant milestones

Months - or years - can pass before work becomes visible externally. This is not a flaw, but a consequence of how knowledge is produced.

Both modes are valid. But they feel fundamentally different to work in.

What I miss, and why

What I personally miss at times is the experience of working together on something concrete. Not because I need closer supervision or structure. But because I value connection through shared work in small teams and because I find it motivating to see tangible output emerge on a regular basis, whether produced individually or together.

Visible artifacts play an important role for me:

• they provide orientation (where am I right now?)
• they support motivation (something is taking shape)
• they create connection (work becomes shareable)

Discussion and presentation formats only partially serve this function. What I am describing here is not co-presence - not being in the same meetings, offices, or calls - but co-productivity: a mode of working where shared artifacts emerge, even if much of the work itself happens individually.

Co-production beyond shared topics

A common objection is that research work is inherently individual and topic-specific. That is true and it is precisely why co-productive work does not need to happen at the level of research questions.

It can exist on other layers of work, for example:

• tools and small utilities
• data handling and workflows
• methods and documentation
• teaching material
• writing that makes processes and decisions visible

Not what we research, but how we work can become a shared space.

Small projects, limited scope

What I miss from earlier work is not meetings or agile terminology.

It is the presence of small, bounded projects that:

• have a limited scope and timeframe
• do not aim to replace core research work
• but still result in concrete artifacts

Not multi-year projects. Not formalized programs. But work that can be started, explored, and, if necessary, abandoned.

Such co-productive projects might take many forms:

• a shared method note
• a small exploratory tool
• a teaching or workshop module
• a collection of working notes
• or a publication space outside formal journals

On visibility and personal profiles

Visibility is often treated with caution in academic contexts. Sometimes for good reasons. But I do not think visibility as such is the problem.

Under conditions of temporary contracts and uncertain career paths, it is reasonable to think about how one’s work becomes visible - especially beyond formal publications. This includes making processes, decisions, and intermediate results accessible.

And visibilty can simply be a by-product of doing work in the open, in a way that allows others to connect to it. The question is not whether visibility should exist, but how it is produced and what kind of work it reflects.

Why this site exists

These questions are closely tied to why I built this website. I wanted a place to document work in progress: projects, decisions, open questions, and intermediate artifacts that rarely fit into standard publication formats. This text itself is part of that practice. It does not propose a solution or a model. It documents a tension and a way of thinking about work that sits somewhere between short production cycles and long-term research timelines.

An addition, not an alternative

This is not an argument for changing how research fundamentally works. Many of the tensions described here are structural and unlikely to disappear.

But I do think there is room, alongside long-term research projects, to consider smaller co-productive forms of work. Not as obligations or reforms, but as optional practices.

Possibly this perspective is shaped by my own background. If so, that is worth making explicit. Between sprint and stillness, there are intermediate rhythms. Sometimes, working together on something small is enough to make longer processes feel more connected.