Scenario planning in Strategic Planning
Summarize
Summary of Scenario planning in Strategic Planning
Scenario planning in Strategic Planning allows organizations to create, evaluate, and approve strategic scenarios that align with their goals and desired business outcomes. This feature enables users to simulate different planning approaches in a safe environment without impacting the live plan. It helps visualize alternatives, assess impacts, anticipate potential challenges, and make informed decisions before final implementation.
Show less
Key Features
- Scenario Creation: Users can create scenarios to test various strategic approaches by prioritizing items, adjusting timelines, and evaluating potential impacts.
- In Plan Toggle: This toggle lets you include or exclude planning items within a scenario. By default, items prioritized or completed with dates within the portfolio plan are toggled “In Plan.”
- Date Fields: Start and end dates for planning items are automatically populated based on planned or actual dates but can be updated during scenario planning. Updated dates are recorded once a scenario is approved, with out-of-range dates visually flagged.
- Scenario Comparison: Multiple scenarios can be compared side by side to evaluate differences in goal alignment, trade-offs, and financial benefits, enabling better decision making.
- Approval Process: After evaluation, the optimal scenario that best fits organizational goals and strategic priorities can be approved to guide the live plan.
- Budget Targeting: Set target portfolio budgets for fiscal periods, quarters, or portfolios, and evaluate proposed budgets against these targets to review monetary benefits from prioritized items.
Key Outcomes
- Organizations gain a structured method to explore and compare multiple strategic planning scenarios without affecting live execution.
- Improved ability to prioritize initiatives, adjust timelines, and forecast impacts before committing resources.
- Enhanced financial oversight by aligning budget targets with proposed plans and benefits.
- Increased confidence in selecting strategic plans that best align with business objectives and minimize risks.
- Clear workflow involving execution and portfolio owners to streamline scenario creation, adjustment, comparison, and approval.
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 Strategic 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 Strategic 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 Strategic 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 Strategic Planning.
Scenario planning workflow in Strategic Planning
Using the Scenario Planning feature in Strategic 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 Strategic 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 Strategic Planning.
- Approve the best scenario that aligns with the organizational goals. For more information, see Approve a scenario in Strategic 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 Strategic Planning process, see Optimizing planning with scenario planning in Strategic Planning Workspace.