page_title: Scenario planning
section_title: Scenario planning compared to other techniques
hierarchical_section_title: Scenario planning / Scenario planning compared to other techniques
caption_attribution_description: English: Process for classifying a phenomena as a scenario in the Intuitive Logics tradition.
context_page_description: Scenario planning, also called scenario thinking or scenario analysis, is 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 methods combine known facts about the future, such as demographics, geography, military, political, industrial information, and mineral reserves, with key driving forces identified by considering social, technical, economic, environmental, and political trends.
  In business applications, that solely emphasis on understanding the behavior of opponents was reduced. At Royal Dutch/Shell for example, scenario planning was viewed as changing mindsets about the exogenous part of the world, prior to formulating specific strategies.
  Scenario planning may involve aspects of systems thinking, specifically the recognition that many factors may combine in complex ways to create sometime surprising futures.
context_section_description: The flowchart to the right provides a process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the intuitive logics tradition.
  Scenario planning differs from contingency planning, sensitivity analysis and computer simulations.
  Contingency planning is a "What if" tool, that only takes into account one uncertainty. However, scenario planning considers combinations of uncertainties in each scenario. Planners also try to select especially plausible but uncomfortable combinations of social developments.
  Sensitivity analysis analyzes changes in one variable only, which is useful for simple changes, while scenario planning tries to expose policy makers to significant interactions of major variables.
  While scenario planning can benefit from computer simulations, scenario planning is less formalized, and can be used to make plans for qualitative patterns that show up in a wide variety of simulated events.
  During the past 5 years, computer supported Morphological Analysis has been employed as aid in scenario development by the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Stockholm. This method makes it possible to create a multi-variable morphological field which can be treated as an inference model – thus integrating scenario planning techniques with contingency analysis and sensitivity analysis.
caption: Process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the Intuitive Logics tradition.
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