Stage 02 of 05 · The maturity model

Stage 02 Shared

Agents reused across teams.

  1. 01 Experimental
  2. 02 Shared
  3. 03 Operational
  4. 04 Governed
  5. 05 Production-Ready
Stage 02

Shared

Agents reused across teams.

One useful agent becomes four. It spreads from the team that built it into marketing, sales, support, and finance. People copy prompts and tokens; everyone has a slightly different version.

What makes it different

Agents are now organisational tools, but ownership is diffuse and identity is borrowed from whoever set them up.

Primary risk

Fragmented ownership and inconsistent standards. No single team is accountable for any given agent.

Next control to fix

Assign named owners. Move agents off personal tokens and onto scoped, revocable identities.

What the controls look like at this stage

Maturity is measured across six control surfaces. Here is where a immature organisation — one sitting at Stage 02 — typically stands on each.

Inventory

Immature

No list. Nobody can say which agents exist, what they touch, or where they run.

Ownership

Immature

Personal accounts. No named human is accountable for any agent’s behaviour.

Runtime visibility

Immature

None. What an agent does between input and output is invisible.

Access control

Immature

Personal tokens with broad scopes. Agent identity is indistinguishable from a user’s.

Evaluations

Immature

None, or a single check before launch that is never repeated.

Governance

Immature

No policy, no audit path, no way to stop an agent cleanly.

Advancing to Stage 03 — Operational

You do not skip stages. You close the gap in front of you, and only one control matters most right now.

Do this next

Assign named owners. Move agents off personal tokens and onto scoped, revocable identities.

03 Operational Agents touch systems, APIs, and data. See Stage 03 →

Stage 02 — Shared, answered.

Short answers for teams placing themselves at the Shared stage of the agent operational maturity curve.

What is Stage 02 (Shared) of the agent maturity model?

One useful agent becomes four. It spreads from the team that built it into marketing, sales, support, and finance. People copy prompts and tokens; everyone has a slightly different version. In short: agents reused across teams.

What is the main risk at the Shared stage?

Fragmented ownership and inconsistent standards. No single team is accountable for any given agent.

How do you move beyond the Shared stage?

Assign named owners. Move agents off personal tokens and onto scoped, revocable identities. That is what takes an organisation from Stage 02 (Shared) to Stage 03 (Operational).

Is your organisation at Stage 02?

Take the free Agent Operational Maturity Assessment — seven minutes, no email required to see your stage and the highest-risk gap to close next.

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