The North's First Minister and Deputy First Minister have their kitchen cabinets mostly in place. Mr David Trimble has appointed an official spokesman, a private secretary and a chief-of-staff.
Mr Seamus Mallon was asked if he would also like a chief-of-staff. "No," said Mr Mallon, "I think the North has had enough chiefs-of-staff, we don't need any more." He appointed two political advisers, a private secretary and a press officer.
The paramilitary resonance inherent in the "chief-of-staff" title may be unfortunate, but if this Assembly is to work Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon must have a trusted inner circle that can help them impose their will on neophyte, often disputatious, parliamentarians and on a civil service which has enjoyed considerable autonomy.
In embryo at least, as the First Minister has promised, a "pluralist parliament for a pluralist people" is replacing the old "Protestant parliament for a Protestant people". To make this succeed, Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon will need all the help they can get.
Shortly, all going according to plan, there will be a shadow executive cabinet, probably of 10 ministers plus Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon. Next spring, after their practice session, this executive will assume much of the powers previously held by the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) ministers, sent by the British government.
So, not only will there be a shift of power from Whitehall to Stormont, but a shift of power from the Stormont civil service, which since direct rule in 1972 has wielded considerable influence, to the politicians. This could lead to tensions.
The teams set up by Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon will have an important function in ensuring that that transition works smoothly and, more importantly, in line with the wishes of the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the Assembly executive.
One of the most interesting of Mr Trimble's appointments is that of Ms Maura Quinn, who becomes his private secretary. While unionist ministers from the old Stormont regimes were notorious for keeping Catholics from top posts, there is further change: not only is Ms Quinn a Catholic but an Irish-speaker as well.
Aged 31, she is seen as a brilliant career civil servant. She is a former private secretary to the now-retired head of the North's civil service, Sir David Fell, and was a member of the NIO's political affairs department which played a crucial role in the process leading to the Belfast Agreement. Part of her brief was to liaise with the different parties, including Sinn Fein.
Even younger is Mr David Kerr, who at 24 will be to Mr Trimble what Mr Alistair Campbell is to Mr Tony Blair, his spin-doctor in chief. If the North ever devises an equivalent of Scrap Saturday, he could be cast as the new, although more unassuming, "Mara".
A son of a Co Fermanagh councillor, Mr Kerr is quiet, "clued-in" and efficient. He has been a Trimble loyalist through good times and bad.
Mr David Campbell, from just outside Lisburn, and a former director of the Somme Centre in Belfast, is Mr Trimble's chief-ofstaff. A senior member of the UUP's talks team, his role will be to ensure that his people "sing from the same hymn sheet".
Mr Mallon has also crossed the religious divide by appointing a career civil servant, Mr Billy Gamble, a Protestant, as his private secretary. In his 40s, Mr Gamble has expertise in the economic development area and has worked as a private secretary for two former NIO ministers, Sir Rhodes Boyson and Sir Adam Butler.
Mr Colin Ross (44), a capable and experienced former journalist who was the British government's press officer in the lead-up to the Belfast Agreement, will handle press relations for Mr Mallon.
Moving outside the Stormont civil service, Mr Mallon has appointed two Magherafelt men as his special advisers: Mr Hugh Logue (49), a former civil rights activist, SDLP founder, and politician in previous failed Northern assemblies who is on secondment from the European Commission in Brussels; and Mr Colm Larkin (49), who is seconded from the European Commission office in Dublin, of which he was head.
Mr Logue has been something of a bogy man for unionists because of his depiction of the Council of Ireland, formed as part of the Sunningdale agreement of 1973, as the vehicle "to trundle" the North into a united Ireland. When Mr Trimble adverted to this at his last UUP annual conference, Mr Logue wrote to The Irish Times to state that if his comments of the time had been taken in full they would have indicated that he favoured a united Ireland being achieved by consent, not coercion.
Insiders say that, despite such differences, Mr Trimble's and Mr Mallon's teams are working well together and they are firmly focused on ensuring that power is properly devolved in Northern Ireland to the politicians.
"There is a quiet revolution going on here; a lot of people are going to feel the wind of change," said one high-ranking insider.