Optimizing planning with scenario planning in Portfolio Planning
Summarize
Summary of Optimizing planning with scenario planning in Portfolio Planning
Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning empowers portfolio managers to optimize decision-making by creating, comparing, and approving multiple portfolio scenarios. This functionality helps align planning items with strategic goals and budget constraints to select the best possible live plan for a given planning cycle.
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Key Features
- Prioritization Tab: Enables adding, removing, and adjusting planning items within a scenario to shape the portfolio plan.
- Roadmap Tab: Provides a Gantt chart-style timeline view where managers can visually adjust start and end dates of planning items by dragging bars across the timeline.
- Financials Tab: Facilitates setting custom budget targets, allocating budgets by expense or cost type, and comparing allocated budgets against targets for Capex and Opex. It supports financial scenario simulations for monthly, quarterly, yearly, or multi-year planning cycles (up to 5 years).
- Outcomes Panel: Displays aggregated financial metrics including set targets, budget utilization, remaining budget, and benefits from planning items, with intuitive color-coded indicators to highlight budget status.
- Scenario Management: Create scenarios from current plans or existing scenarios, compare multiple scenarios side-by-side, approve the best scenario as the live plan, and manage existing scenarios by renaming or deleting.
Practical Use and Configuration
Portfolio managers can simulate different budget allocations and item prioritizations to assess trade-offs and financial impacts. Enabling the budget allocation property and configuring budget attributes are essential to allocate budgets effectively at the portfolio level. Personalization is possible through time scale and range filters to match organizational planning cadences.
Financial scenario planning supports only Epics, Projects, and Demands. Customers using Legacy Investment Funding should migrate to the new experience for financial scenario capabilities.
Common Use Cases
- Fiscal Year Planning: Create multiple scenarios to prioritize items aligned with strategic goals, collaborate with stakeholders, compare scenarios, and approve an optimal portfolio plan for the upcoming fiscal year.
- Mid-Cycle Reprioritization: Adjust plans mid-cycle in response to changing priorities by creating and refining scenarios, incorporating feedback from program and financial teams, and finalizing the updated plan.
Key Outcomes
By leveraging scenario planning, ServiceNow customers can make informed, strategic, and financially sound portfolio decisions. The process supports balancing resources against strategic objectives, improving transparency, and enabling stakeholder collaboration. Approved scenarios become the official portfolio plan, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and budgets throughout the planning cycle.
As a portfolio manager, optimize your portfolio planning by comparing potential outcomes, assessing their alignment with strategic goals, and approving the best scenario as your live plan.
Scenario planning items in the Prioritization tab
The Prioritization tab of the Scenario page enables you to add and remove planning items to/from a scenario and adjust their dates.
Scenario planning items in the Roadmap tab
The Roadmap tab displays a Gantt chart-like view of the planning items in the scenario, showing their planned start and end dates across the portfolio plan timeline. Using the Roadmap tab, you can drag the bars representing planning items across the timeline to adjust their dates.
Scenario planning items in Financials tab
The Financials tab of the Scenario page enables you to set custom targets, budget, and compare the allocated budget against target using the outcomes panel.
Create multiple scenarios to compare them, and work with your stakeholders to approve an ideal plan with better monetary benefit returns. Once approved, the approved Scenario will become your new portfolio plan for the defined planning cycle. For more information to know about the changes happening in a portfolio after scenario approval, see Approve a scenario in Strategic Planning.
- Financials in scenario planning is supported only for Epics, Projects, and Demands type of planning items.
- Customers using the Legacy Investment Funding should migrate to new experience to work on the financial scenario planning.
Personalize your scenario planning financials view using the Time scale and Range filters. Manage the budget of your planning items by monthly, quarterly, or yearly cadence depending on the planning cycle of your organization.
The outcomes panel in the simulation indicates the financial information of the portfolio such as target and budget amounts for Capex and Opex, set budget target for this simulation, utilized and remaining budget from the target, benefit from the In-plan items, and the actual costs accounting from the out of plan items. The aggregated data is fetched based on the portfolio timeline range including the target and budget data.
| Indication | Definition |
|---|---|
| Red text for amount without progress bar indication for Total Simulated Budget | No defined or set target amount for this scenario. |
| Red text for amount and red progress bar for Total Simulated Budget | Total allocated budget for planning items exceeds the scenario's set target amount. |
| Red text amount for Capex Budget | Capex Budget allocations exceed the scenario's Capex target. |
| Red text amount for Opex Budget | Opex Budget allocations exceed the scenario's Opex target. |
| Green text for budget amounts and green progress bar | Budget allocation for each expense types and total budget is within the scenario's set target. |
Scenario planning features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Create a scenario in Portfolio Planning | Create a scenario from the current plan, or another scenario, in a simulated environment to compare the scenario with the live plan and other scenarios. |
| Compare scenarios in Portfolio Planning | Compare scenarios and the live plan side by side to review tradeoffs and items added or removed from the plans. |
| Approve a scenario in Portfolio Planning | Approve the best scenario. |
| Manage scenarios in Portfolio Planning | View list of scenarios, rename scenarios, and delete scenarios. |
Scenario planning use cases
- Fiscal year planning: Megan Burke, Portfolio Manager at ACME Inc, is planning for the next fiscal year and is required to prioritize planning items and align them with the organizational strategic goals. Megan creates a scenario for the portfolio plan and then uses the Prioritization tab to align items with goals. Megan holds discussions with program managers and with the financial team, creates multiple scenarios, and compares them. Megan approves the optimal scenario as a well-aligned strategic portfolio plan for the next fiscal year.
- Mid-cycle reprioritization; Changed priorities emerging mid-year require adjustments to the current portfolio plan. John Doe, the product manager at ACME Inc, creates a scenario and incorporates the changed priorities. John adjusts the plan based on the program manager's and financial team's feedback and finalizes the plan.