All courses / Tools
About the course
The course works through Tools, the companion reference to Books 1 to 10 of The Transformed Architecture. It begins with the rules of the reference: four kinds of tool, a shared anatomy, identifier chains and the life of a tool from selection to retirement. It then takes the tools by activity: architecture and delivery, governing AI, securing and testing, operating, agents and autonomy, and people, organisation and society. It ends with two fictional organisations building a toolbox and with the patterns and gaps that ten volumes show side by side. It matters because a template is useful only when someone owns it, tests it and knows when its evidence expires.
After the course the participant can
- Classify any tool as an artefact, an own tool, a third-party tool or a method, and locate it by name or identifier prefix
- Trace a chain of records by their identifiers and state the owner, evidence date and expiry of each
- Select a tool against one unit of value and plan its adoption, review and retirement
- Draft decision records, policies as gates and evidence manifests for architecture and delivery
- Build the governance chain from inventory entry to obligation mapping, supplier annex and exit test
- Design authorised, scoped tests and the detection, recovery and coverage records that verify a defence
- Bound an agent with a mandate, a delegation profile, an observer, a tested stop path and a containment profile
- Assess a toolbox by evidence age, adoption and retirements, and keep a local gap list
Three ways to run it
The same material in three lengths. Each row of an agenda names the lessons it draws on.
Executive briefing90 minutes
For board members, programme owners and senior managers who must decide what a toolbox should contain and how to judge it
A briefing on what the toolbox is, how two organisations built theirs and how to tell whether one works. It follows the reader path the book gives a board member or programme owner: building a toolbox, the conclusions, then choosing, adopting and retiring tools.
| 0:00 | What counts as a tool: the four kinds, the inventory of ten volumes and how to read an entry Ch. 1 |
| 0:15 | Two starting points: Nordvik Region as cautious buyer and Hansa Mutual as builder, and why the order follows the gap Ch. 24 |
| 0:35 | Four decisions in the life of a tool: select, adopt, review and retire Ch. 3 |
| 0:50 | Three measures of a toolbox: evidence age, adoption and retirements; what a board should ask for Ch. 2, Ch. 24 |
| 1:05 | Five patterns, the gaps between volumes and seven actions for Monday Ch. 25 |
| 1:20 | Discussion: the first gap in our own organisation and the tool we would take up first |
One-day seminar1 day
For architects, governance leads, security practitioners and operators who will select and adopt tools from the series
A working day that teaches the rules of the reference in the morning and then samples one tool family from each activity, with short exercises on Nordvik Region, Hansa Mutual or the participants' own organisation. Participants leave with a draft toolbox plan and three filled-in templates.
| 09:00 | The four kinds of tool, the inventory and the ten-minute test with the Tool Finder Ch. 1 |
| 09:40 | The common anatomy and the identifier chain from service record to risk acceptance Ch. 2 |
| 10:20 | Choosing, adopting and retiring: option comparison, readiness scorecard, adoption dashboard, anti-pattern records Ch. 3 |
| 11:10 | Architecture and delivery: decision records, policy gates and evidence manifests; exercise on a gate specification Ch. 4, Ch. 5 |
| 12:00 | Lunch break |
| 13:00 | Governing AI: the record chain from inventory to exception, obligation mapping and the exit test Ch. 7, Ch. 8, Ch. 9 |
| 13:50 | Securing and testing: rules of engagement, detection records, recoverability claims and coverage records Ch. 11, Ch. 12, Ch. 13, Ch. 14 |
| 14:40 | Operating: objective records with burn-rate alerts, change classes and runbook manifests Ch. 15, Ch. 16 |
| 15:20 | Agents and autonomy: exercise on a delegation profile with observer and stop path Ch. 18, Ch. 19, Ch. 20 |
| 16:10 | People and evidence: decision records with a route to contest, and grading a claim on the evidence ladder Ch. 22, Ch. 23 |
| 16:40 | Building a toolbox: draft plan from the first gap, the three measures and the seven actions for Monday Ch. 24, Ch. 25 |
Full course8 weeks, one module a week
For practitioners and teams who will build and maintain a toolbox, with time to fill in templates between sessions
The complete course: one module a week, each with a lecture on the part and one lesson per chapter with an exercise that produces a real artefact. The capstone, a toolbox for one service or system, is built up week by week and presented in the final session.
| Week 1 | The Toolbox: kinds of tool, anatomy and identifier chains, and the life of a tool; capstone scope chosen Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3 |
| Week 2 | Architecture and Delivery: models and decision records, policy gates and evidence, the platform Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6 |
| Week 3 | Governing AI: inventory, classification and risk; obligations, assurance and maturity; suppliers and sovereignty Ch. 7, Ch. 8, Ch. 9 |
| Week 4 | Securing and Testing: threat modelling, authorised testing, detection, response and recovery, the verification loop Ch. 10, Ch. 11, Ch. 12, Ch. 13, Ch. 14 |
| Week 5 | Operating: observability and objectives, change and runbooks, capacity, cost and energy Ch. 15, Ch. 16, Ch. 17 |
| Week 6 | Agents and Autonomy: mandates and delegation, observers and stop paths, defending the agent Ch. 18, Ch. 19, Ch. 20 |
| Week 7 | People, Organisation and Society: roles and competence, managing people with AI, weighing evidence Ch. 21, Ch. 22, Ch. 23 |
| Week 8 | Experience and Conclusions: building a toolbox, patterns and gaps; capstone presentations Ch. 24, Ch. 25 |
Modules and lessons
One module for each part of the book and one lesson for each chapter. A lesson has learning objectives, key concepts, a teaching plan, discussion questions, an exercise and a self-test.
Module 1 · Part I · The Toolbox
Part I sets the rules of the reference. The participant learns the four kinds of tool, how the catalogue was compiled from an inventory of ten volumes, how an entry is read, what all artefacts have in common, how identifier families link records into chains, and how a tool is selected, adopted, reviewed and retired. The participant leaves able to find a tool in about ten minutes and to say what evidence shows that it still works. Lecture: A toolbox is a set of dated claims, not a shelf of templates
Module 2 · Part II · Architecture and Delivery
Part II covers the tools of architecture and delivery: models and decision records kept as text, policies that an engine evaluates on every change, pipelines that sign and store what they checked, and the platform layers on which AI systems run. The participant leaves able to choose a model language, write a decision record, read a Rego gate, pick one shape of evidence manifest and say which platform components a team may adapt and which it may not remove. Lecture: Text, checks and evidence: one pull request from model to proof
Module 3 · Part III · Governing AI
Part III covers the tools for governing AI. The participant follows a system from inventory and classification through risk and impact assessment, exception and AI Decision Record, then maps obligations to controls and evidence, tests a control independently, reads a maturity result with care, and binds a supplier from tender to exit. The participant leaves able to keep a small set of records that each say who owns this, what it is for and when it stops being valid. Lecture: Governing AI with records that expire
Module 4 · Part IV · Securing and Testing
Part IV covers the tools for securing and testing, all of them defensive. The participant names threats with shared vocabularies and records them as code, authorises and plans a test under signed rules of engagement, keeps detections, cases, hunts and intelligence as records, carries an incident from declaration to a proved recovery, and closes the loop with coverage records, regression cases and chaos experiments. The participant leaves able to ask of any claim: what was tested, when, with what result and by whom. Lecture: From named threat to verified control: securing and testing as one chain
Module 5 · Part V · Operating
Part V covers the tools of operating: seeing a service and stating what users are promised, changing it and bringing it back within bounds, and keeping it big enough, affordable and measured in its use of energy. Most tools come from AI Operations, with roots in Architecture as Code, AI Governance and AI Platform and Security. The participant leaves able to write an objective with burn-rate alerts, bound a change and a runbook by data, and steer cost with files that the gateway and the report both read. Lecture: Operating by record: see, act within bounds, account for the cost
Module 6 · Part VI · Agents and Autonomy
Part VI covers the tools that govern agents. The participant writes down what an agent may do in a mandate manifest and a delegation profile, attaches an autonomy budget, specifies an observer the agent cannot write, proves by drill that the stop path works, and secures the agent itself with an identity of its own, short-lived credentials, a permission manifest and a containment profile. The participant leaves able to assemble the chain from scale to register and to find the broken link. Lecture: A label without a control: mandates, observers and containment for agents
Module 7 · Part VII · People, Organisation and Society
Part VII covers the tools that concern people, organisation and society. The participant fixes what a role may decide in a charter, records competence so that it can condition an agent's autonomy without ranking anyone, shows who decided about a person and how that person can contest it, and weighs contested claims about AI with an evidence ladder, a threat register and a debate in four steps. The participant leaves able to agree first what a record may not be used for. Lecture: Who decides, who can do it, who can contest it, and what to believe
Module 8 · Part VIII · Experience and Conclusions
Part VIII puts the toolbox together. The participant follows Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual through an illustrative year of building a toolbox, learns why the order follows the gap and not the catalogue, and measures a toolbox by evidence age, adoption and retirements. The conclusions then name five patterns that recur across ten volumes, the gaps and inconsistencies the inventory found, and seven actions for Monday. The participant leaves with a toolbox plan and a local gap list. Lecture: One design, many dialects: building and judging a toolbox
Final assignment
Capstone
A dated toolbox for one service or AI system
Build a small, working toolbox for one service or AI system of your own organisation, or for one system of Nordvik Region or Hansa Mutual as the book describes them. Start from the obligation or risk that is already present and has no tool. Select eight to twelve tools from at least four parts of the book, take each template from the originating volume through the Template Library, fill in at least five of them, and link them by identifier into a chain. For every tool state the owner, the last test, the clock that governs its evidence, a measure of use and a retirement criterion. Record what you deliberately leave out and why. Use only defensive, authorised and scoped activities for anything that tests a control.
Steps
- Name the first gap and write an option comparison for the first tool, including a non-AI option and doing nothing
- Select eight to twelve tools across at least four parts, each with kind, originating book and chapter, and the template version taken
- Fill in at least five artefacts and link them by identifier, with your own organisation infix and a stated identifier rule
- For each tool record owner, last test with date and result, governing clock, measure of use and retirement criterion
- Record two tools left out with the condition under which each returns, and open a local gap list
- Assess the result with the Toolbox Maturity tool and present the toolbox plan over four quarters
Deliverables
- A toolbox register of eight to twelve tools with kind, origin, owner, last test, clock, use measure and retirement criterion
- At least five completed artefacts linked into one identifier chain diagram
- A four-quarter adoption plan with recorded omissions and a local gap list
- A ten-minute presentation of the first gap, the order chosen and the three toolbox measures
Assessment criteria
- Fidelity: every tool, purpose and identifier family traces to the book and the originating volume, with nothing invented
- Evidence: every claim that a tool covers, recovers or verifies something carries a date, a result and a clock
- Coherence: the artefacts cite one another by identifier and the chain can be followed in both directions
- Judgement: the order follows the gap, omissions are recorded with return conditions, and defaults are chosen by a stated decision
- Safety and respect: tests are authorised and scoped, stop paths sit outside the system stopped, and no record ranks or monitors named individuals