GUIDE
Reviewing AI tools before adoption: the guide
Every week a new tool knocks: a browser extension, a writing assistant, a meeting transcriber. This guide gives review its toolkit: one request card, data questions before capability questions, and a recorded decision with its constraints and review date.
AI tool review becomes disciplined in six steps: one request card, then the data-path check (residency, retention, training), then identity and access, then a narrow trial under tight permissions, then a named recorded decision with constraints, then periodic review of the approved, turning the queue into a measurable lane.
THE PROBLEM
The problem: a queue without a standard
Approval requests arrive faster than any team can review them. And each gets judged differently depending on who picked it up: one asks about encryption, another about price, a third approves because the requesting department is in a hurry. The result is a slowness that pushes employees to try without waiting: that is, into the shadow.
The missing standard wrongs both sides: the reviewer carries decision liability without a toolkit, and the requester can't fathom why their ask was refused while its twin passed last month.
Good review is neither the slowest nor the harshest; it is standardized questions answered once, and a recorded decision citable for every similar request after.
Judge a tool by what leaves your data toward it, not by what appears on its screen.
THE PRINCIPLES
The principles
- Review the usage, not the logo. The same tool can be safe for one case and risky for another: the unit of review is tool × use case × data classification.
- Data first. Where is it sent? Where does it reside? Do models train on it? Who at the vendor sees it? These questions precede any capability demo.
- The output is a recorded decision. Approve, refuse, or trial under constraints: every decision under its owner's name, with its constraints and review date, in a retrievable register.
THE STEPS
The six steps
The first three steps are paperwork and require buying nothing, and they save most of the time.
- Standardize the request card. Tool name, intended use case, expected data classification, anticipated user count: one page the requester fills, killing half the debates before they start.
- Check the data path. Read the processing terms, not the marketing page: residency, retention, training on your data, sub-processors, deletion path, any ambiguity becomes a written vendor question.
- Check identity and access. Does the tool sit behind your SSO? Does it understand roles? Does it write an exportable event log? A tool that doesn't know your identity starts the review from behind.
- Trial narrowly. Few users, non-sensitive data, a pre-set duration: inside your gate where possible, so the register writes the trial's trail instead of it being retold as impressions.
- Decide with a name and a date. A recorded decision with its owner, constraints (for whom, which data, what limits), and review date: cited on every similar request, so no review is repeated twice.
- Re-review the approved periodically. Tool terms change quietly: a new model, a new sub-processor, a new retention policy. A decision without a review date ages exactly like a forgotten policy.
ILLUSTRATIVE
WHERE AN APPROVAL REQUEST SPENDS ITS TIME: ILLUSTRATIVE
An illustrative split: standardization attacks the waiting and the chasing, not the decision moment.
EVALUATION
Evaluation questions
- How many requests wait today, and since when? If the answer isn't a ready number, the queue itself is invisible: that's gap one.
- Can you retrieve last year's decisions with their constraints? An irretrievable decision will be made again: usually with a different outcome.
- What is the fast lane for low-risk tools? One lane for everything means one queue for everything: a declared fast lane protects the full lane from being bypassed.
Try the card on a real request.
Bring an approval request stuck with you today: we run it through the six steps together and show its decision recorded in the control plane.
EVALUATION QUESTIONS
Questions raised in every evaluation.
Who should sit on the review committee?
Three suffice: security checking the technical path, a compliance rep checking the terms, a business owner vouching for the need, more than that is slowness the queue pays for.
Does this replace the full legal review?
No, it precedes and feeds it: the card and checks hand legal a complete file instead of a cold start. The full contractual review has its own playbook.
What about refused tools still being used?
A refusal without an alternative becomes shadow, so tie every refusal to the official path serving the same need inside your gate, and watch the gap in the register.
CLOSE
Closing: from heroics to a lane
Review that relies on an expert reviewer's heroics doesn't scale; review that becomes a lane (standardized questions, recorded decisions) scales and accelerates at once. The difference isn't the team's intelligence; it's the existence of the toolkit.
The toolkit is ready: a full playbook and a security checklist
Standardize the questions. Speed the decision.
Print the guide and its security checklist, and test them on a tool awaiting your decision this week, then bring what you found.
This page prints cleanly: its split is illustrative.