Two issues cause the most friction in any large company: how money and headcount are divided, and what happens when two divisions want to build the same thing. At Ammetra, the Executive Steering Committee (the C-Suite Council) governs both through two processes:

1. The annual capital allocation cycle, which decides where budget, headcount, and infrastructure go.
2. The Executive Product & Architecture Council, which approves major new products and architecture changes and prevents duplicate work.

The goal is simple: by the time a decision reaches the CEO, the trade-offs and budget impacts have already been worked out.

The Annual Capital Allocation Cycle #

Divisions do not compete for a fixed pool of money. Instead, the Steering Committee runs a four-phase cycle each year.

Phase	Led by	What happens	Output
1. Planning	Chief Strategy Officer and the Corporate Strategy & Long-Term Planning team	Review market trends and set the 3-to-5-year company vision	Corporate strategy and planning guidance
2. Programming	Division EVPs, with the Steering Committee deciding	Divisions submit multi-year resource requests; the committee debates them and allocates headcount and server capacity	Multi-year portfolio and headcount plan
3. Budgeting	Chief Financial Officer	The first year of the plan becomes a firm budget, checked for feasibility	Approved fiscal-year budget (OpEx and CapEx)
4. Execution	Operations and Finance	Spending and results are tracked against the budget in Quarterly Business Reviews	Mid-year adjustments

1. Planning: Setting the Strategy #

The Chief Strategy Officer and the Corporate Strategy Department study market trends, competitors, and technology shifts, then define where the company needs to be in three to five years. For example, Planning is where the company would decide to invest heavily in generative AI.

2. Programming: Allocating Headcount and Capacity #

Each division EVP submits a multi-year resource request that shows the people, infrastructure, and funding the division needs to deliver its part of the strategy. The Steering Committee debates the requests and decides, for example, whether the Cloud Services & Platform Division or the Core SaaS Division gets the larger share of new engineering hires.

3. Budgeting: Locking In the Fiscal Year #

The Chief Financial Officer turns the first year of the agreed plan into a firm budget. The budget is reviewed for feasibility, and both categories of spending are locked in:

• Operating expenses (OpEx): Salaries, marketing, licenses, and other running costs.
• Capital expenses (CapEx): Long-term investments such as new data centers.

4. Execution: Quarterly Business Reviews #

Operations and Finance track every division’s performance against its budget. In each Quarterly Business Review (QBR), the C-Suite can move funds to where they will have the most impact. For example, if the Agile Incubation Team is spending heavily without delivering a minimum viable product (MVP), its funding can be shifted elsewhere.

The Executive Product & Architecture Council #

In a large software company, divisions can easily build overlapping features or disagree about technical boundaries. The Executive Product & Architecture Council prevents this.

Item	Details
Chair	The Vice Chair of the Executive Steering Committee, typically the Chief Technology Officer (the Chief Strategy Officer may chair instead)
Members	The division EVPs
Authority	Final validation board for major new product lines and enterprise architecture changes
Meets	Monthly, with extra sessions for urgent decisions

The Product Requirements Process #

Before a division spends significant budget on a new capability, the council must validate it.

1. Proposal: The division submits the business case, scope, and architecture outline through its Strategy Liaison.
2. Duplication and architecture review: The council checks whether another division already has, or is building, something similar. For example, if the Emerging Technologies / AI & ML Division proposes a new data pipeline, the council confirms the Cloud Services & Platform Division isn’t already building one.
3. Decision: The council approves the proposal, merges it with an existing effort, asks for changes, or declines it.
4. Tracking: Approved work is tracked through Quarterly Business Reviews.

Forced Integration #

The council’s main job is to make sure Ammetra’s products work together. It requires every division to use the same:

• Internal APIs
• Security protocols
• Shared infrastructure

This keeps the company from splitting into separate, competing product silos.

When the CEO Decides #

The CEO makes the final call on major decisions, but only after the Steering Committee and the Product & Architecture Council have worked through the technical trade-offs and budget impacts. This keeps the CEO’s time focused on the decisions that truly need it.

Getting Involved #

• Resource requests and proposals: Submit through your division’s Strategy Liaison (listed in the intranet directory).
• Council agenda and minutes: product.council@ammetra.com
• Planning calendar and templates: Intranet → Corporate Strategy

Council Secretariat: [Name] · ext. XXXX