TP-10 CEM Technical Papers Technical Paper

No Backlog

Why there's no to-do list — by design

The rule that prevents deferred work from becoming dead work. No ticket queue. No sprint planning. No prioritization ceremony. Advance it or stash it.

Solo Operators · Founders · Methodology · Researchers

0
Backlog items maintained
0
Tech debt tickets
10
Systems shipped without one
The Problem

The average product backlog grows without bound. Items enter but rarely exit except through completion or quiet abandonment. Studies show 60–80% of backlog items are never completed. The backlog does not represent future work — it represents work that already failed the prioritization test but hasn't been honestly acknowledged as rejected. CEM eliminates the category entirely: every unit of work has exactly two outcomes — advance it toward Target or stash it in Foundation. No 'later' list. No deferred queue.

What This Establishes
Backlogs are where work goes to die.
60–80% of backlog items are never completed. CEM eliminates the category — the Pendulum forces every piece of work to advance or stash. Nothing sits in a 'maybe' queue.
Inventory principles apply to knowledge work.
Ohno proved that inventory hides defects and delays feedback. A backlog is inventory. Eliminating it forces the system to address problems immediately.
10 systems prove it works.
2,561 commits across 10 production systems. Zero formal backlog. Zero tech debt tickets. Zero deferred-work lists. The portfolio is the evidence that execution without a backlog produces more, not less.
Validated by these builds
CS-02 Five Days to Production

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