Scenario Analysis in Support of Strategic Planning

Scenario analysis consists of a set of techniques that can be used in association with a strategic planning process to acknowledge uncertainties and potential volatile socio-economic environments. Scenario analysis does this by assisting with the development of alternative plausible futures that are ultimately expressed as stories or narratives. The scenarios serve two main purposes, one is to continually refine expectations of the future with respect to consistencies among the relationships, and the other is to offer a value-free forum for which ideas concerning the future can be shared within an organization. Scenario analysis is not a replacement for the mathematical processes described earlier in this book, but a complement to those processes.