TOM Design Checklist

Used in STEP 7

A glimpse inside

Preview of the D5 worked example — structure and colouring shown, detail deliberately softened

3 tabs: Cover · blank tool · Meridian worked example. The same Yes / Partial / No scoring across the operating-model criteria, with a second table that tracks each AS-IS operational risk to the TOM change that mitigates it and the residual exposure.

In a sentence — confirm the target operating model actually supports the redesigned process across every layer — not just the layer that was easiest to redesign.

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What this tool does

Structure gets redesigned. Process gets redesigned. Then a new operating model quietly inherits the old technology, the old sourcing decisions, or the old resilience gaps, because nobody checked all four layers at once. This tool tests strategy, process, people and technology against the same explicit criteria, so nothing gets waved through by default.

Operational resilience gets its own dedicated section rather than being folded into ‘technology’ or treated as a control bolted on afterwards. It means the model keeps critical services running through an outage, a key-person absence, or a third-party failure — not just that it works on a good day, which is the same discipline the method applies to the TOM stage generally.

WHY THIS HELPS

Risk trend is tracked separately from risk severity, and the register itself is a separate test from the checklist above it: the checklist asks whether the design criteria are formally met, the register asks whether the operating model actually reduces the risks recorded back in D1. A High-risk item trending Reduced and one trending Increased look identical on a severity-only view; a tidy checklist next to an unmoved risk register is the sheet telling you something's wrong.

HOW MOVEMENT IS CALCULATED

Under the hood, Low/Medium/High is converted to 1/2/3 for both the AS-IS exposure and the Residual exposure you enter, and Movement is simply whichever way that number changed — Reduced if Residual is the lower number, Increased if it's higher, No change if they're equal. That means a shift from High to Medium counts exactly the same as a shift from Medium to Low: one severity step, regardless of which two labels are involved. It also means you can't fudge a small win into a big one — there's no partial credit for ‘still High but a bit better’. If a risk hasn't moved a whole severity band, the sheet correctly shows No change, which is often the more honest and more useful signal at this stage of a design.

What's included

D5 · TOM Design Checklist — the blank tool

Ready to complete for your own engagement. Blue-tinted cells are for you to fill in.

Worked example

The same tool completed end to end, using the fictional Meridian Wealth Management scenario — see what ‘done’ looks like before you start your own.

How it's used

A quick walkthrough of the sheet:

Using this tool

1Work through each design criterion and set Met? to Yes, Partial, No or N/A.

2Test across all four TOM layers — strategy & proposition, processes & controls, people & organisation, technology & data — not just the one furthest along.

3Treat operational resilience as its own criterion, not an afterthought folded into technology.

4Record evidence, a named owner, and a gap action wherever the answer isn't Yes.

5Watch the risk-closure table separately — High risk is flagged amber, and the trend colours itself Reduced (green) or Increased (red).

Matches the sheet's own columns exactly: #, Design criterion, Met?, Evidence, Owner, Action if gap.