Legacy scenario analysis

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

9 minutes to read

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Summary of Legacy Scenario Analysis

Legacy Scenario Analysis in ServiceNow’s Operational Resilience application enables you to identify, analyze, and manage business-specific risks by evaluating their impact on business services. This process helps track actions and improvements in the Operational Resilience Workspace, ensuring your organization can prepare for and respond effectively to potential disruptions.

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Scenario Analysis Process

Scenarios represent business risks used to test how events affect your organization’s services. Each service includes dependencies automatically populated by the Compute Operational Resilience Compliance scheduled job. The process involves:

Creating scenarios with assigned owners, plan approvers, and analysis approvers.
Adding scope, dependencies, participants, services, and scenario events.
Generating response tasks automatically for participants assigned to events.
Requesting plan and analysis approvals to progress through analysis stages.
Verifying service status and disruption impacts.
Closing response tasks and scenario events upon completion.
Monitoring scenario status in the Operational Resilience Workspace.

Setup Tasks for Legacy Scenario Analysis

Users with the snoperres.manager role can set up legacy scenario analysis by:

Creating scenario records and assigning key roles.
Defining service scope and dependencies relevant to the scenario.
Associating scenario events, participants, and issues to the analysis.
Requesting and obtaining plan approval before analysis.
Collecting participant observations, gaps, and recommendations.
Comparing impact tolerance against disruption duration to identify breaches.
Requesting analysis approval and closing the scenario analysis.

Workflow States and UI Actions

The scenario analysis progresses through defined states with specific actions:

Draft: Create and save scenario analysis, add services, dependencies, and request plan approval.
Pending Plan Approval: Plan approver reviews and approves or rejects the plan.
Analyze: Add scenario events and participants; participants work on response tasks and provide feedback.
Pending Analysis Approval: Analysis approver reviews and approves or rejects the analysis.
Approved: Scenario analysis is approved and ready to be closed.
Closed: Owner closes the scenario analysis, completing the process.

Each state advances the scenario analysis toward resolution, with automated task generation and notifications to participants.

Services and Dependencies

Services are fetched from the Services (OR) entity type, filtered to include only Facilities, People, Suppliers, and Technology pillars. Each service has related dependencies, also restricted to these pillars, which are automatically populated by a scheduled job. This ensures accurate mapping of critical service components and their dependencies for risk analysis.

Response Tasks

When participants are assigned to scenario events, response tasks are automatically created and assigned, triggering email notifications. Participants can add notes, update impact duration, and complete tasks, supporting collaborative analysis and timely response management.

Known Issue and Workaround

During upgrades from Release 15.x.x to 16.x.x, response tasks may not be created automatically for participants in the Analyze state. As a workaround, managers must remove and re-add participants to trigger task creation or proceed without response tasks if preferred.

Summary Panel Insights

The Summary panel in the scenario analysis form provides a consolidated view of:

Number of services associated and their status relative to impact tolerance.
Count and completion status of scenarios and events.
Disruption duration metrics, including total event durations with and without overlaps.

This information helps you quickly assess the overall impact and progress of your scenario analysis.

By performing a scenario analysis, you can determine the risks that might impact your business. You can analyze the impact of the scenarios and events on your business services. You can also track the actions and improvements from the scenario analysis in Operational Resilience Workspace.

Scenario analysis process

Scenarios represent the business-specific risks that are used to test how events can impact your organization. By performing a scenario analysis, you can analyze the impact of the scenarios and their associated events on your business services. Each service has a few dependencies associated with it. The Compute Operational Resilience Compliance scheduled job runs in the background and populates the dependencies for the services. As an owner of the scenario analysis, you can request a plan approval.

When a plan approver approves the plan approval, it triggers a response task for the scenario analysis. Participants of the analysis work on the response tasks and add their observations on the analysis.

As an owner of the scenario analysis, you can verify the status of the services and calculate the possible disruptions. After the response tasks have been completed, you can request an analysis approval for your scenario analysis. When an analysis approver approves the scenario analysis, you can close it and monitor its status in Operational Resilience Workspace.

Note:

Starting with Operational Resilience, version 22.3.1, the advanced scenario analysis experience is displayed in the Operational Resilience Workspace by default. To enable the legacy scenario analysis entry points, see Enable the legacy scenario analysis flow.

Tasks to set up the legacy scenario analysis

If you've got the sn_oper_res.manager role, you can set up the legacy scenario analysis as follows:

Create a scenario that helps you to determine the risks that are applicable to your business.
Assign an owner, a plan approver, and an analysis approver to the scenario analysis in the scenario analysis form.
Add the scope and dependencies that are applicable to your scenario.
Associate one or more scenario events with the scenario analysis. Add the participants, services, dependencies, and issues that are specific to a scenario event. When a scenario event is associated with a participant, a response task is automatically generated on the Responses tab and it’s assigned to the participants.
Send the scenario analysis to the plan approver of the scenario analysis and request for a plan approval.
Collect the observations, gaps, and recommendations from the participants about the scenario analysis event. The participants of a scenario event are the users with at least the sn_oper_res.user roles from the associated business functions, such as Finance or HR departments.
Compare the impact tolerance with the disruption duration to determine if any service was breached.
Close the open response tasks and open scenario events that are associated with your scenario analysis.
Send the scenario analysis to the analysis approver for a review and request an approval for the scenario analysis.
Close the scenario analysis and monitor its status in Operational Resilience Workspace.

States and UI actions that are associated with a scenario analysis

The states and UI actions that are associated with a scenario analysis are described in the following table.

Table 1. States and UI actions that are associated with a scenario analysis
State	UI action	Description
Draft	In the All scenario analysis form, select New.	More details about the UI actions for this state: In the All scenario analysis form, select New, add information in the Details tab, and select Save. A record is automatically created in the Draft state. On the Scope tab, select Add to add a service from the list of the available services. Note: The services are fetched from the Services (OR) entity type in the Operational Resilience application. Some services in the Operational Resilience application are associated with specific dependencies, for example, Acer or Adtran. To select a service that is associated with a dependency, select Add dependency related scope. On the Dependencies tab, select Add to associate a dependency with the scenario analysis as shown in the following example. Some dependencies are associated with specific services. You can add a dependency that is related to a specific service by selecting Add scope related dependency. To save the selections, select Save. In the scenario analysis form, select Request plan approval to request a plan approval from the plan approver of the scenario analysis. Note: You must associate at least one service to begin the scenario analysis.
Pending plan approval	Navigate to the Approvals tab, update the state from Requested to Approved, and then in scenario analysis form, select Save.	More details about the UI actions for this state: As the plan approver of the analysis, you must review the scope of the analysis in the Pending plan approval state. You can check the setup of the associated services, participants, scenario events, and issues. To approve the plan for the analysis, navigate to the Approvals tab, update the state from Requested to Approved, and then in the scenario analysis form, select Save. When you approve the plan for the scenario analysis and save it, the state of the scenario analysis is updated to Analyze. If you reject the plan, the state of the scenario analysis is reset to Draft.
Analyze	On the Scenario events tab, add a scenario event to the analysis by selecting Add. On the Participants tab, add a participant to the analysis by selecting Add. On the Scenario events tab, update the state to Closed to close the scenario event. Select Request analysis approval.	More details about the UI actions for this state: In this state, the participants of the scenario analysis can add their work notes in the scenario analysis form and work on events that are based on their responsibility. Note: You must add at least one service, one participant, and one scenario event before proceeding with the scenario analysis. On the Scenario events tab, select Add to associate one or more scenario events with the analysis. On the Participants tab, select Add to associate one or more participants with the analysis. When a scenario event is created, a response task is automatically created and assigned to the participant. You can collect the feedback from the participants and review their observations, gaps, and recommendations for each associated event on the form. Navigate to the Responses tab and close the response tasks that are associated with a scenario event. Update the state of the scenario event from Draft to Completed and close the open scenario event. Select Save. Based on the observations and recommendations, the details of the scenario analysis are auto-filled in this state in the scenario analysis form. To request an approval from the analysis approver, in the analysis form, select Request analysis approval. The state of the scenario analysis is then updated to Pending analysis approval.
Pending analysis approval	Navigate to the Approvals tab and update the state from Requested to Approved.	If you're the analysis approver, you can review the analysis scope in this state. Check the progress on the analysis for the selected business service. You can then approve or reject the analysis.
Approved	In the analysis form, select Save.	When you approve the scenario analysis, the state of the scenario analysis is updated to Approved. If you reject the scenario analysis, the state of the scenario analysis is reset to Analyze. When the state of the scenario analysis is in the Approved state, you can close the scenario analysis.
Closed	In the analysis form, select Close.	As an owner of the scenario analysis, you can close the scenario analysis. The state is updated to Closed.

Fetching the service entities from the Services (OR) entity type

The Operational Resilience application fetches the service entities from the Services (OR) entity type as shown in the following example.

Users with the sn_oper_res.admin role can view the Entity Types module and its related lists in the Operational Resilience application UI as shown in the following example.

Service entities under the Services OR entity type. — Figure 2. Service entities under the Services OR entity type

Note:

You can only select the entities that belong to the Facilities, People, Suppliers, and Technology pillars. The Services and Processes pillars are filtered out from the list of the pillars for the entities.

Dependencies for the services

Each service has a few dependencies associated with it. The Compute Operational Resilience Compliance scheduled job runs in the background and populates the dependencies for the services. The following example shows that the Addison, TX United States HVAC entity is listed as a dependency for supporting the Faster Retail Payments service.

You can only select the dependencies that belong to the Facilities, People, Suppliers, and Technology pillars. The Services and Processes pillars are filtered out from the list of the pillars for the dependencies.

Response tasks

As a scenario analysis owner, when you create a scenario event and add a participant to it, a response task is automatically created for the participant. When a participant is assigned to a scenario event, a response task is created. An email notification is automatically sent to the participant.

On the Responses tab, the details of the response task such as the response task number, name of the assigned participant, and state of the response task are displayed.

The owner of the scenario event can add a service and a dependency to the response task. The assignee of the response task can complete the response task, add their notes about the scenario event, and update the impact duration of the scenario event as shown in the following example.

Notes about the scenario event. — Figure 4. Notes about the scenario event

Known issue for upgrading from Release 15.x.x to Release 16.x.x

While upgrading from Release 15.x.x to Release 16.x.x, if you have a scenario analysis in the Analyze state and a participant is already added to the scenario analysis, a response task is not created automatically. This is a known issue.

As a workaround for this issue, the Operational Resilience manager must remove the participants from the scenario analysis and add them to the same scenario analysis. The Operational Resilience application then automatically creates a response task for the scenario analysis.

Note:

You can also choose to proceed with the scenario analysis without a response task.

Summary of the services, scenarios, disruptions, and events

You can view information on the services, scenarios, disruptions, and events in the Summary panel as shown in the following example.

Summary panel of the scenario analysis form. — Figure 5. Summary panel of the scenario analysis form

The Summary panel provides information about the business services, associated scenarios, disruptions, and events. For a description of the field values, see the following table.

Table 2. Summary of the services, scenarios, disruptions, and events
Field	Description
Number of services	Number of services that are associated with the scenario analysis.
Number of services under impact tolerance	Number of services that are associated with the scenario analysis and that are under the impact tolerance.
Number of services above impact tolerance	Number of services that are associated with the scenario analysis and that are above the impact tolerance.
Number of scenarios	Number of scenarios that are associated with the analysis.
Number of scenarios completed	Number of completed scenarios that are associated with the analysis.
Number of events	Number of events that are associated with the analysis.
Number of events completed	Number of completed events that are associated with the analysis.
Disruption duration	Time duration between the end time of the last event and the start time of the first event. It is displayed in the number of days.
Duration of events with overlaps	Summary of all event durations including the overlapping events and pauses. It is displayed in the number of days and minutes.
Duration of events without overlaps	Summary of all event durations without the overlapping events and pauses. It is displayed in the number of days and minutes.