AI for Consulting Capstone Exercise — AI for Consulting

What you'll learn

Apply skills from across this course in a single realistic client engagement scenario
Produce a concrete, client-ready deliverable using AI tools, verified against this course's standards
Self-assess your output against professional quality criteria a partner would actually apply

Across this course you have worked through client research and due diligence, framework application, data analysis, competitive and market intelligence, deck drafting, proposals, confidentiality risk, and defending AI-assisted work to a skeptical client. This capstone asks you to bring several of those skills together under the kind of time pressure a real engagement actually creates — a new prospective client, a short runway, and a partner who will ask exactly the questions this course has prepared you to answer.

Capstone Exercise

A Diagnostic Briefing for a New Prospect Under Time Pressure

Context

You are a consultant at an independent advisory practice. A prospective client — a 90-store regional homeware retail chain — has asked your firm for a short diagnostic briefing ahead of a proposal meeting in three days, covering their competitive position and two or three priority areas your firm would investigate if engaged. The client has shared their most recent annual report and a one-page description of their situation: flat like-for-like sales for six quarters, a recent entry by a well-funded online-first competitor into their core category, and a board that is divided on whether to prioritize store investment or e-commerce investment. You have no other primary research access before the meeting.

Your Task

Use AI tools to produce a two-page diagnostic briefing with four sections. (1) A company and market background summary drawn from the shared annual report and public sources, with every factual claim traceable to a specific source. (2) A Porter's Five Forces or SWOT analysis of the client's competitive position, populated with evidence specific to this client rather than generic retail-sector statements — flag any entry you could not support with specific evidence as a research gap rather than guessing. (3) Two or three priority investigation areas you would propose for the engagement, each with a one-sentence rationale tied to a specific fact from the background research. (4) A short closing paragraph, written in your own words, stating what in this briefing came from AI-assisted drafting versus your own analytical judgment, and what you would tell the client directly if asked whether AI was used in preparing it.

Your notes (optional)

Deliverable

A two-page diagnostic briefing (500–700 words) with four labeled sections: sourced background summary, an evidence-based competitive framework with gaps explicitly flagged, two to three prioritized investigation areas with rationale, and a closing disclosure paragraph distinguishing AI-assisted drafting from your own analytical judgment. The briefing should be ready to support a partner walking into the proposal meeting.

Quick check

One of your Five Forces entries could describe any regional retailer facing an online-first competitor, and you cannot trace it to anything in the shared materials. What does this capstone tell you to do with it?

Select one answer.

Key takeaways

A client-ready diagnostic briefing under time pressure is exactly the scenario where the disciplines from this course compound: fast AI-assisted research, verified before use, populated into a framework selected and weighted with judgment, with gaps flagged honestly rather than papered over.
The habit of tracing every factual claim to a specific source and flagging unsupported entries as gaps, rather than guessing to fill a template, is what separates a defensible diagnostic briefing from a document that collapses under the first client question.
Practicing the AI-use disclosure conversation before it happens in a live client meeting — being specific about what AI accelerated versus what judgment was applied — is a transferable habit worth carrying into every engagement, not just this exercise.