Provisional Backbone
The temporary spine a body stands up so it can begin — held openly as temporary, so that beginning does not decide what it becomes.
Nothing can start without some structure. Somewhere to keep the work, some way of planning it, something that holds the money, someone who answers. A body that waits for the right structure never begins; a body that adopts one without noticing has been shaped by whatever it grabbed. A provisional backbone is the third option: take what is at hand, use it fully, and say out loud that it is temporary (Prototype · Do the Work · Current Best Understanding · Stewarded Form).
The canon names two of them. A technology backbone — the platform that connects people, groups and projects so they can do better together, adopted from work that already existed rather than built (Technology · Interoperability · The open web). And a project-management backbone — the definitions of how work is planned, committed to and tracked, taken from the integrated delivery material (Integrated Delivery · Last Planner System · Networks of Commitments · The Structure Of Integrated Delivery).
The word provisional is the load-bearing one, and it is the same move as the provisional mind (Provisional Mind). It makes the successor thinkable. Unnamed temporary structures become permanent by default, not by decision — and then get defended, because by then people's roles live inside them (Drift · Institutional Idolatry · Term Limits And Rotation).
Two disciplines make the word mean something rather than being a comfort. Name what would replace it and on what trigger — a backbone held provisional for years with no successor named is permanent and mislabelled (Gaps Not Yet Closed · Milestone · Honesty about time). And keep the exit cheap — plain portable records, no lock-in, nothing essential encoded only in the borrowed thing, so that replacing it is a change of tool rather than a change of identity (Screens and paper · Technology Sovereignty · Manufactured Dependency · Off switch · Possibility Of Reversal).
Also called: the provisional structure
Stands on: Prototype · Current Best Understanding · Infrastructure
Opens onto: Provisional Mind · Stewardship body · Structuring and Federating Emergent Opportunities · Organizations The LIØNSBERG Way · Technology Sovereignty · Phase-Gated Architecture · Shared Services, Infrastructure, and Support · Sponsorship
In play: the Room — the structure a body stands up on its first day, named as temporary on that day
Sources: Provisional Backbone (root page, stub — names a technology backbone adopted from an existing platform and a project-management backbone from the Integrated Delivery Guide) · Provisional Structure (root page) · lionsberg.wiki: Provisional Backbone
Open: The technology backbone is named by an external link to a third party's platform, with no account of what depends on it or what happens if it goes; that is exactly the dependency the concept exists to make visible. · No successor and no trigger is named for either backbone. · Inbound links were not counted.