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Owner's Operating Model  ·  by Boanta

You run a company of agents.

Not one assistant — an organization. A chief of staff over a bench of project managers, each running your real systems of record, with every decision still routed back to you. Drawn here as a building section: read it top‑down, walk it floor‑by‑floor.

L4 L3 L2 L1 L0 YOU · The Principal Sets direction  •  sole decision & approval Chief of Staff the orchestrator Single pane across the portfolio. Turns activity into insight & recommendations. Reports, dashboards & narration — on any schedule. Acts across every system. to your pocket Project Manager Project Manager Project Manager Engagement A Engagement B Engagement C runs backlog + work items keeps the record straight reports up, acts down … one seat per client / project, added as you grow CLAUDE PROJECTS the platform every floor stands on — no custom stack to buy SYSTEMS & DATA PLANE reads + writes · every system on this floor Azure DevOps system of record backlog · work items SharePoint ⇅ local file sync projects + portfolio Microsoft 365 mail · calendar teams · docs + Any system anything with data plug in & extend TAG TENNIS you ⇆ your PM · on the work item, in Discussion
How to read it. Direction flows down the amber line; reports and insight flow back up the blue. The amber dashed bus shows the Chief of Staff reaching every system on the data plane — not just one. And the teal thread is the one to watch: tag tennis runs from you at the top all the way down to the record at the bottom.
Tag Tennis

The human-in-the-loop, on the record

Everyone in this market talks about human-in-the-loop. This is what it actually looks like: you and your project manager volley a work item back and forth — on the record itself, in the Discussion, by tagging each other. You steer, it executes, you approve or redirect, it moves. Asynchronous, and every exchange is logged — the trail is the audit trail. It is the thread that connects your judgment at the top floor to the system of record at the bottom, and it is the piece almost no one else is doing.

L4

You — the Principal

The top floor, and the only one that decides. Everything below can draft, run, reconcile and recommend; approval stays with the human. That single closed gate is what makes "the agents run everything" safe to say out loud.

L3

Chief of Staff — the Orchestrator

Your right hand over the whole portfolio. One pane across every engagement; it compiles the managers' activity into insight, reasoning and recommendations, and delivers reports, dashboards and narration on a schedule or on demand — to your desk or your phone. It reads and writes across every connected system to answer, not just report.

L2

Project Managers — one per engagement

A standing manager for each client or project. It owns the backlog and work items, keeps the record straight, runs the day-to-day, and reports up to the Chief of Staff. Add an engagement, add a seat — the floor extends without redesigning the building.

L1

Claude Projects — the platform

The slab the whole structure stands on. No bespoke platform to license or maintain; the operating model runs on ground that is already there.

L0

Systems & data plane

The bedrock the work actually touches: Azure DevOps as the system of record, SharePoint synced to local files for every project and the portfolio, Microsoft 365 for mail, calendar and collaboration — and a dashed placeholder for anything else with data in it, ready to plug in. The Chief of Staff reaches across all of them.