A strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. It is in large part an adaptation and generalization of classic methods used by military intelligence.

The original method was that a group of analysts would generate simulation games for policy makers. The games combine known facts about the future, such as demographics, geography, military, political, industrial information, and mineral reserves, with plausible alternative social, technical, economic, environmental, educational, political and aesthetic (STEEEPA) trends which are key driving forces.


Description

Name1 Scenario Planning
Domain It is applicable for all economic activities (isic), sustainable development targets (sdg or sdt) and functions of government (cofog).
Target Outcome A number possible futures for a person or household (see also pico or household journey), a business or organization (see also micro journey), a sector of industry or government (see also meso or sector journey), or a territory or landscape (see also macro or landscape journey).
Social actors and roles Scientists or consultants and stakeholders in the work system at either of the socio-technical levels pico, micro, meso or macro in the social architecture, and/or at a level of scope.
Trigger or preceding interaction Environmental scanning (Wikipedia), a shock, the sensing of an alarming trend in a territory, sector, organization or household.
Interfaces and services For scenario planning exercises with a broad scope it is recommended that social actors within the target group of the scenario can give inputs and/or obtain results during several phases of a scenario initiative. Also it must be considered that successful scenarios eventually should inform (investment-) decisions by multiple actors adopting a Collaborative Planning Methodology - #pi9.
Inputs and outputs inputs:experts opinions of factors, trends, possible events,… outputs: a publication with the identified scenarios, such as for instance: Global Banking 2020: Foresight and Insights
Stores and tools See the Special Issue on Scenarios for complexity in the journal Environmental Modelling & Software (November 2017 issue) (embedded tweet).
Other characteristics
Part of (Collective) regulative bundle
Parts
Succeeding Interactions Business leaders put their business through the scenario in order to analyse how a business or regulator would perform under a given scenario. See the video The Long-Term Value of Scenario Planning.
Alternatives Scenario planning is one of number of anticipatory thinking protocols. Other such protocols include Delphi method (Wikipedia), Causal layered analysis (CLA) (Wikipedia), Failure mode and effect analysis (Wikipedia), Simulation (Wikipedia). More techniques at Future techniques (Wikipedia).
Action Realm Monitoring & Evaluation
Risks
Further reading Scenario planning (Wikipedia) and the Special Issue on Scenarios for complexity in the journal Environmental Modelling & Software (November 2017 issue).

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