Items are just something that has to be done, like rebooting
a server, finding an IP address, or installing some software.

It's very flexible what the items can be; make magic only cares
that there is something to do, if it needs to be done in this
case, what needs to be done first and if it's done yet.

If you want to automate any of the items though (and that's
pretty much the point) these requirements have to be met
for every item:


* It's well defined. 

Basically ask yourself, Can I automate this on it's own?
If not, maybe it needs to be split up into multiple steps,
or think of it more in terms of what you're trying to get
done.

* Knowing what needs to happen first

You need to be clear what information you need to do the
item, and what needs to happen before it does. e.g.
before setting up the network on a system you probably
need it's hostname, and need to have allocated an IP
address.

* There is a clear point at which it finishes.

In almost every case, other items are going to be waiting
until this item has finished, because it needs to rely on
it having been done.  If you have a step called "Reboot the
server", it's more likely what you really want is "Reboot
the server and wait for it to come up again".

* You can tell if it worked or not

If you assume an item completed successfully without checking,
other items that depend on it will run under the assumption
everything is in a well known and consistent state, because
everything before it ran correctly.  Blindly going ahead and
doing stuff when things are already in a broken state will
at best make it hard to debug, and at worst do damage.