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Module
Module 4 of 5Lesson 4 of 4~10 min

The tool selection grid

Rankings of the best AI tools age quickly and know nothing about your own context or constraints. This lesson gives you a grid of criteria, some of them deal-breakers, to choose the right tool for a given deliverable and explain that choice clearly to your team.

Take this lesson: your first course is freeSee the full syllabus

Lesson objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to choose a tool for a given deliverable by applying a grid of six criteria, at least one of them a deal-breaker, and justify your choice rather than follow a ranking.

Topics covered

  • selection grid
  • selection criteria
  • AI tools
  • buying decision

Where it fits

Choosing the right tool and way of working

Which tool, and which way of using it, for which need?

Lessons in this module

  1. General-purpose assistants
  2. Conversation, project, research, agent: choosing the mode
  3. Specialized tools
  4. The tool selection grid (this lesson)

What you will learn in the course

This lesson is part of the course Choosing and using AI tools at work

  • Explain how a generative AI assistant works and what it does well or badly, so you know what to ask of it.
  • Identify a tool's limits (fabrications, sources, freshness, data privacy) and the precautions to take before using it.
  • Write a clear request (task, context, data, format, criteria) that produces a usable first result.
  • Diagnose why a response falls short and fix it with a targeted clarification.
  • Select the right tool for a deliverable using a grid of criteria (deliverable, data, sources, cost, language, integration) and justify the choice.
  • Choose the right way of working for a task (conversation, project, deep research, agent) and the level of control that goes with it.
  • Build your toolkit by comparing at least two tools on a real task with criteria written in advance.

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