The Great Library of Unfinished Intentions

The oldest building in the Indifferent Realms was neither the Royal Palace, nor the Temple of Reasonable Excuses.

Not even the famous tavern “The Last-Minute Miracle.”

It was the Great Library of Unfinished Intentions.

It belonged to the Magistrate.

The Magistrate was not a bad man.

He was an orderly man.

And everyone in the Kingdom knew that order was an extraordinarily comforting thing.

Whenever someone had a good idea, it was brought to the Magistrate.

There it was carefully written onto parchment.

Given a number.

Sorted into several categories.

Assigned a priority.

Later assigned another priority.

Linked to related ideas.

And finally placed upon one of the countless shelves.

The Magistrate was immensely proud of his Library.

He had spent forty years perfecting its organization.

He could instantly answer questions such as:

“Where can I find every proposal for bridges that might involve ducks?”

Or:

“Which initiatives were considered strategically important during years ending in seven?”

The King was always impressed.

The Magistrate was too.

One day, the Witch asked an unusual question.

“How many of them became reality?”

The Magistrate frowned.

“We don’t record that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we manage ideas.”

“Not results?”

“Results belong to the craftsmen.”

He smiled with satisfaction.

“My responsibility is to ensure that nothing is ever lost.”

“Is anything being lost?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why the Library?”

“So that someday nothing can be.”

The Witch nodded thoughtfully.

“Interesting.”

“What is?”

“You have begun managing possibilities as though they were already obligations.”

Master Harnock rarely visited the Library.

Not because he disliked books.

Books were excellent.

Libraries, however, had an unfortunate tendency to become ambitious.

“You have been busy,” Harnock observed.

“Three hundred thousand future initiatives.”

“Indeed.”

“How many craftsmen do you employ?”

The Magistrate consulted a register.

“Craftsmen?”

“The people who actually build these initiatives.”

“Oh.”

He turned another page.

“Seven.”

Harnock silently looked across the endless shelves.

Three hundred thousand initiatives.

Seven craftsmen.

He began doing the arithmetic.

Then wisely decided against finishing it.

At that moment Construct Aitch-Two-Oh entered the Library.

His eyes immediately began to glow.

“So many tasks!”

The Magistrate smiled.

“We call them backlog items.”

Aitch’s cooling fans accelerated.

“I shall implement them all!”

The Witch sighed.

“There it is again.”

“What?”

“The sentence that has already ruined several kingdoms.”

The Magistrate guided them through the shelves.

“Here are the customer wishes.”

“Over there, the important customer wishes.”

“Next to them, the very important customer wishes.”

“And those are the strategic customer wishes.”

“Further back are the strategic customer wishes after the last quarter.”

“And at the very end, the urgent strategic customer wishes.”

Aitch stared at the endless rows.

“So much work!”

“No,” said the Witch.

“So many opportunities!”

“No.”

“So many future products!”

“No.”

She removed a random parchment from a shelf.

It contained only one sentence.

“Improve the user experience around reporting.”

She handed it to Aitch.

“What does this mean?”

Aitch considered it carefully.

“I could produce approximately four hundred different implementations.”

“Exactly.”

The Magistrate smiled.

“The intention is obvious.”

“To whom?”

“To everyone.”

The Witch passed the parchment to Harnock.

He read it in silence.

“What does improve mean?”

Nobody answered.

“What exactly is user experience?”

Silence.

“How shall we know when we are finished?”

More silence.

Harnock nodded slowly.

“Then this is not knowledge.”

“What is it then?”

He gestured toward the shelves.

“Liabilities.”

The Magistrate looked genuinely offended.

“Ideas cannot become liabilities.”

“Ideas cannot.”

The Witch pointed toward the shelves.

“But these ideas have numbers.”

“Priorities.”

“Owners.”

“Meetings.”

“Estimates.”

“Maintenance.”

She smiled kindly.

“You have transformed wishes into administrative objects.”

They continued walking.

Ahead of them stood an enormous wall.

Upon it hung an immense calendar.

Months.

Quarters.

Years.

Colored strings connected countless parchments to dates.

“Remarkable,” Aitch observed.

“Isn’t it?” the Magistrate replied proudly.

The Witch studied the calendar for quite some time.

Then she asked,

“Why is time hanging on your wall?”

The Magistrate looked puzzled.

“Because projects require time.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Time passes.”

Silence.

“Can you influence time?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why have you organized all your work around the only quantity entirely beyond your control?”

The Magistrate had no answer.

The Witch took a sheet of paper.

She drew two lines.

The first she labeled Capabilities.

The second Options.

“These two you can change.”

Then she pointed to the calendar.

“That one changes you.”

The Magistrate remained unusually silent.

Just then, a young apprentice entered carrying a small wooden box.

“What is that?” asked the Magistrate.

“Our log.”

The box contained barely thirty cards.

Each card contained only three things.

• A business capability.
• An executable acceptance test.
• Its current result.

Most of the cards were green.

Three were red.

Two had never been executed.

The Magistrate frowned.

“That seems remarkably incomplete.”

“It is.”

“Where is everything else?”

“What everything else?”

“The future ideas.”

The apprentice shrugged.

“If they still matter next month, someone will remember them.”

“And if nobody does?”

“They probably weren’t important enough to build.”

The Magistrate looked horrified.

“You trust memory?”

“No.”

The Witch shook her head.

“We trust reality.”

Aitch looked from the vast Library…

…to the tiny wooden box.

“This box contains statistically almost nothing.”

“It does.”

“But it precisely describes what the Kingdom can actually do today.”

“Exactly.”

His cooling fans became noticeably louder.

“So a backlog describes…”

“…an imagined future,” said the Witch.

“And a log…”

“…describes verifiable reality.”

“And one of them can be demonstrated at any time.”

“Precisely.”

The Magistrate stood silently looking across his shelves.

After a long while, he quietly asked,

“What if I catalogued the tests instead of the wishes?”

The Witch smiled.

“Then you would no longer possess a Library.”

“What would I possess instead?”

“A map.”

And ever since then, experienced craftsmen throughout the Indifferent Realms have remembered an unusually practical proverb:

“A backlog manages promises. A log describes reality.”

And reality, though considerably less impressive than a great library,

possesses one remarkable quality:

It can always prove itself.