Most governance conversations assume the team has already been built. The reality in 2026 is the opposite — the team is one or two people, the demands have doubled because of AI, and the question is not how to design the perfect program but how to keep the lights on. For this episode of the Naftiko Capabilities Podcast we pulled together two takes on that exact question from a longer conversation with Budha Budhathoki of Tyk and Supreet Singh of Northwestern Mutual.
Budha frames the answer in terms of cultural shift — convincing stakeholders that platform investment is not a zero-sum game, that the framework one team builds becomes the framework every other team can reuse. Supreet comes at it from the practitioner side, with maturity models and iterative value delivery as the working tools that let a small team make compounding progress without burning out.
Both guests then reflect on how AI is reshaping the conditions under which that answer has to hold up. The same compliance demands, the same architectural review work, the same documentation expectations — only now multiplied across every team that has bolted an AI layer on top of an existing API surface. The short-handed team is getting more short-handed, and the work is not waiting.
If you want the longer thread on zero-touch governance, the first Budha and Supreet episode is in the back catalog. We’ll be back next week with more from the unused side of that recording — including why both of them choose to share their governance work publicly when most people in their position do not.
