Scenario Planning Flashcards
1
Q
Scenario planning
A
Method of establishing small number of possible futures for planning purposes
2
Q
Implications of scenario planning
A
- Not forecasts or predictions of what will happen, but stories about what may happen
- Best used over medium period (limited number of factors in play), depends on speed of environment changes
- Depends on how complex the environment and the scale of issues surrounding it (e.g. Political, economic)
3
Q
Strategic assessment context
A
Approach: pictures of the future, how is strategy going to perform against each assumption
4
Q
Shell method
A
Identify the trends - optimistic or pessimistic futures
- Identify dominant themes - how do they intersect?
Story/essay describing the scenario (scenarios should be gestalt - understanding picture as a whole)
5
Q
Factor choice method
A
- Identify critical factors in the future scene
- Seek plausible combinations of these factors
- Expand details of scenarios to suit
- Plotting: impact (vertical axis) vs uncertainty (horizontal axis)
Divide graph into 3 sections:
- Baseline factors: known but high impact
- Discriminants: uncertain and high impact
- Scenery: low impact, helps to add to picture
6
Q
Generating skeletons for the essay
A
Algebraic view: use factors to generate assumptions for scenarios
- Each future contains baseline assumptions
- Each discriminant can take a number of values
These possible values will generate a number of possible futures (e.g. 3x2=6 possible futures), each future consists of:
- Chosen set of values for each discriminant
- Baseline assumption
- Baseline factors only have one assumption about future
- Discriminant factors each have more than one assumption about their future state (different levels of outcome)
7
Q
Forming scenarios
A
- Scenarios are more than the skeleton
- They are an essay/story/painted picture
- Use skeleton as storyline, use scenery to cue extra/convincing connect and material
