Requiem for an unfinished book

Xanpan 2 is an unfinished book, a book that never will be finished. Well thats why the way I see it but I see the vision for the book I started to write, you dear reader see a collection of essays that may, or may not, constitute a book.

Indeed for sometime I’ve been troubled by the question “What is a book?”

I’ve written two books which are undoubtedly books: Changing Software Development and Business Patterns for Software Developers are traditional books, they are had print runs of several thousand copies with a traditional publisher - John Wiley and Sons. In writing them I had a contract: it contained a draft table of content, synopsis and approximate number of works, and it stipulated a end date.

These books were written to be printed but even as I was writing them the electronic book revolution was taking place. Both became available later as eBooks.

And then I wrote Xanpan, or rather the first Xanpan. This was self published using the LeanPub system. For a while it was only available as an eBook and on the LeanPub system. Gradually it acquired all the trapping of a traditional book: a nice cover, a copy edit, printed versions and even an ISBN code before it became available on Amazon - where most books sell today.

Xanpan looks like a book, is smells like a book, so, I guess it is a book.

The problem was, in writing Xanpan I didn’t know when to stop. There came a point where I wanted to “finish” it. I had more to say - I always do! - but I needed to move on.

Xanpan 2 was started in the glow of Xanpan and set out to say a lot of things which went beyond the original thesis. But Xanpan 2 stalled. Drafts chapters were written but never edited, my attention went elsewhere - other book projects like Little Book of User Stories and 50 Shades of Scrum took my attention.

Now, a little over a year after officially starting Xanpan 2 I feel I need to terminate it. Terminate rather than finish because it falls were short of the finish line I imagined. What is here is here, what is not… well I would like to add more but other ideas are pressing, other initiatives are squeezing it out.

Many of the ideas I wanted to express in Xanpan 2 have moved forward and some of the existing content should be updated to make it a book. But these ideas now cluster around another name, probably No Projects or Stream Based Development. Xanpan was Xanpan, Xanpan expresses the way I think agile software development works. Xanpan 2 expands on those ideas but… it will never be complete.

With a publisher a book is either completed or not, and if it is not then eventually the publisher calls time and the book and content never see the light of day. With LeanPub style publishing, were early version of the book have been sold I can’t pretend the book never happened - not least to myself and those who paid money for it.

I need to finish Xanpan 2 so that the ideas I want to express can emerge in the right way. I need to end Xanpan 2 to save those ideas.

So Xanpan 2 is, and always will be, an unfinished book. It will never be copy edited, it will never acquire a nice cover or an ISBN. Xanpan 2 is therefore more of an appendix to Xanpan than a sequel. An appendix yes, and a name change is probably appropriate: “Xanpan Appendix: Notes on teams.”

To those who paid, and may still pay, money for Xanpan 2: thank you for your faith, I’m sorry, I intend to find some way to make it up to you.

allan kelly allan@allankelly.net

London, March 2016