The approach page covers the C3 architecture and proving method. A standalone squad can be consumed immediately for a bounded outcome. This page covers the wider-change path: senior-led discovery, a Glass Tube pilot sized to the decision, then multiple squads supported by the wider bank. In our model, the operating model is Capability and Control Intelligence in practice: how leaders set authority and decision rights, how squads carry capability, and how control is observed and evidenced continuously.
The operating model expands in step with the certainty of the work.
DTA leadership, senior architects, business architects and AI-aware domain specialists identify the value drivers, proposition, domains and target organisation. This work is founder-led and deliberately senior.
A light Glass Tube uses a Product Owner and FDE, plus selected enterprise-service specialists where needed, to build a sandbox prototype and prove the integration path. A fuller one adds the first squad, coaches and functional specialists to run the domain end to end.
Multiple squads take ownership of the DBBs proved through the Glass Tube. Coaches and specialists across finance, HR, procurement, risk and audit extend the operating model through the organisation.
A full-depth Glass Tube pulls one beachhead domain through the functions it needs, rather than transforming every function horizontally up front.
Each function changes the slice the first value stream needs, then the next. Risk and audit shape the control and evidence model; Finance funds the value stream rather than a project; HR establishes the SFIA-based role architecture; Procurement creates a route for fixed-capacity delivery; Operations shifts to exception handling and oversight of agent-prepared work; Compliance turns obligations into composable controls.
What actually makes functions move is sponsorship with teeth. Tie transformation outcomes to a named accountable executive under SM&CR, and the functions move because someone is personally accountable, not because a deck asked nicely.
The Product Owner and FDE lead the landing, pulling in only the enterprise services the proof actually crosses. Together they prepare the host, prove the integration path and adapt DTA's paved road into one the bank can adopt.
Expect gaps: a secure SDLC, architecture review and CISO sign-off that still assume the old delivery shape; ITIL v4 not yet able to absorb continuous, agent-assisted delivery; procurement designed for staff augmentation or fixed-scope SOWs; and incumbent suppliers with commercial reasons to slow a model that shifts value to reusable capability. The pilot pair works through those constraints with the existing technology teams before multiple squads arrive.
Sequencing whole-bank change while keeping the lights on needs a small backbone that owns the roadmap, the dependencies and the operating-model change itself, not a revived programme office that manages features and reads status.
An executive, SM&CR-tied, who can change finance's funding rules, HR's grades and risk's operating model, and whose incentives change with them.
Owns the reference architecture and the fitness functions that keep the estate composable rather than forked. This is the centre of gravity for sovereignty, and the role we most often advise into.
Owns sequencing, dependencies and the migration path, so change lands in the right order without re-centralising delivery.
Coaches join a full-depth Glass Tube when culture and ways of working are part of the proof, then help the model scale. They build the muscle and leave.
What coaches are not here for: ceremony-teaching, running stand-ups by rote. What they are for: helping senior people unlearn stage-gate reflexes and adopt accountable autonomy and evidence over status; coaching leadership on how to fund and govern value streams; and, distinctively, coaching senior squads on the agentic golden path, the evals and the harness. Because AI is absorbing role boundaries, you need fewer classic process coaches and more agentic delivery coaches, a genuinely different profile.
Leaders move from approving projects and reading status decks to funding value streams and reading evidence. That shift is as large as the squad shift, and the one most likely to silently revert.
Name the leaders, tie them to SM&CR, and change what they're funded and measured on, or the squads run fast inside an unchanged governance cage.
Tell us the proposition, architecture decision, or transformation problem you are facing. We will tell you, honestly, whether and how we can help.
Discuss a challengeLiving models and Field Notes on the future of banking. Published when the model changes, not on a schedule.