# Design guidelines

The following guidelines provide a starting point for governance model design. The specific details of what you need to put in place depend on your own environment.

## System and environment

The following table gives an overview of the factors relating to your system and environment to take into account when you design your governance model.

| Element | Details |
|  --- | --- |
| Data | Data management needs to ensure smart usage of data, for example:Data cachingData for fetching policies |
| Domain structure | The domain hierarchy needs to be designed to fit the model, for example:Whether to implement parallel domains or a single domain hierarchyThe depth and width of the domain structureThe number of subdomains associated with each domainUser-friendliness of domain namesFor more information about domains and how the hierarchy affects policies, see [Domains](/products/custody/v1.26/overview/governance#domains). |
| Users | User administration needs to take the model into account, for example:Number of user groupsNumber of users per groupUser-friendliness of group namesUsage of technical users (bots) |


## Policy framework

The following table gives an overview of the factors relating to your policy framework to take into account when you design your governance model.

| Element | Factors to consider |
|  --- | --- |
| Granularity and spread | The framework needs to include an approach to policy coverage, for example:All-encompassing or very specificGranularity:MECE approach (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive)Russian doll approach: A stack of increasingly specific policies, for example:BTC transfer (rank 100)BTC transfer above 2 BTC (rank 50)BTC transfer above 2 BTC to a non whitelisted address (rank 20)Edge cases |
| Failsafe | A failsafe mechanism needs to be considered, in the form of a breakglass policy. For more information, see [Breakglass policy](/products/custody/v1.26/get-started/design/policies/breakglass). |