Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning
Summarize
Summary of Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning
Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning allows ServiceNow customers to create, evaluate, and approve strategic scenarios that align with their organizational goals and strategic priorities. It provides a safe environment to simulate different planning approaches without impacting the live portfolio plan. This helps organizations visualize alternatives, anticipate challenges, assess impacts, and make informed decisions before finalizing a plan.
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Key Features
- Scenario Creation: Enables the development of simulated plans where you can prioritize or deprioritize planning items, adjust timelines, and explore strategic approaches.
- In Plan Toggle: Automatically sets prioritization for planning items based on specific criteria such as planning state and dates, allowing easy modification within scenarios.
- Date Management: Start and end dates for scenario items are auto-populated from planned or actual dates but can be updated. Dates outside acceptable ranges are flagged for review.
- Scenario Comparison: Allows side-by-side evaluation of multiple scenarios to analyze differences in goal alignment, trade-offs, and financial benefits, facilitating selection of the optimal scenario.
- Approval Workflow: Supports formal approval of the chosen scenario that best fits strategic objectives.
- Budget Management: Enables setting target portfolio budgets for planning cycles (fiscal period, quarter, year, or custom timeline) and comparing target versus proposed budgets of prioritized items.
Practical Use and Outcomes
By leveraging scenario planning, ServiceNow customers can confidently test various strategic plans and understand their impacts before committing changes to the live portfolio. This approach reduces risk, improves alignment with business goals, and optimizes resource allocation. The ability to compare scenarios side by side provides clarity on trade-offs and financial implications, supporting better decision-making. The approval process ensures that only the best-aligned scenario is implemented, aligning portfolio execution with organizational priorities.
Create and evaluate strategic scenarios to explore different planning approaches. Approve the optimal scenario that aligns with the organizational goals and strategic priorities.
Scenario planning overview
Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning enables organizations to create, evaluate, and approve the best strategic scenario that aligns with their strategic goals and intended business outcomes. This process helps in visualizing different approaches, assessing their impacts, and making informed decisions before implementing the live plan. By using scenario planning, organizations can anticipate potential challenges.
What is a scenario
A scenario in Portfolio Planning is a simulated version of a plan that enables you to explore a strategic approach without affecting the live plan. It provides a safe environment to prioritize items, adjust timelines, and evaluate the potential impacts of each approach.
As compared to a plan, a scenario additionally has the following:
- In Plan toggle: The In Plan toggle enables you to prioritize or de-prioritize the planning items in the scenario you’re creating. By default, when you create a scenario, the
In Plan toggle is turned on for planning items that have all of the following field values:
- Planning state as Prioritized or Done
- Start and end dates within the portfolio plan dates.
- Date fields: The Start date and End date fields for the scenario are automatically populated based on either the planned or actual start and end dates of the planning items. You can update these dates during the scenario planning process. Once the scenario is approved, the updated dates are recorded as the approved dates for the planning items. If the updated dates fall outside the acceptable range, they’re highlighted in yellow.
For more information on portfolio plans, see Portfolio plans in Portfolio Planning.
By comparing scenarios side by side, you can assess the differences in goal alignment and trade-offs between each scenario. This comparative analysis helps identify the scenario that best meets strategic objectives. For more information on comparing the scenarios, see Compare scenarios in Portfolio Planning.
Scenario planning workflow in Portfolio Planning
Using the Scenario Planning feature in Portfolio Planning, you can perform the following activities:
- Create a scenario to explore different strategic approaches and business outcomes. For more information, see Create a scenario in Portfolio Planning.
- Adjust and compare multiple scenarios side by side to evaluate differences in goal alignment, trade-offs, and financial benefits. For more information, see Compare scenarios in Portfolio Planning.
- Approve the best scenario that aligns with the organizational goals. For more information, see Approve a scenario in Portfolio Planning.
- Set a target portfolio budget for each of your planning cycle, which can be for fiscal period, quarter, yearly, or portfolio timeline.
- Evaluate the target vs proposed budget of In-plan items and review the monetary benefit from the prioritized items.
Scenario Planning workflow overview
The scenario planning workflow involves an execution owner and a portfolio owner. The following illustration illustrates how scenario plans are created based on the planned or actual dates of planning items and how the In-plan toggle is adjusted based on the states of these planning items.
For more detailed guidance on using scenario planning to enhance your Portfolio Planning process, see Optimizing planning with scenario planning in Portfolio Planning.