Team Planning! Scenario planning is a team planning experience that takes perspectives from different areas inside and outside the organization. They brain-storm to identify possible deflection points in the future. A few selected scenarios are drafted into articles about the future. These “alternate futures” can then be “played” against the various strategic and disaster recovery plans to improve their robustness.

Since the future can not be know with certainty, scenario planning tries to identify possible (probable) deflection points in the future where the “official view” would no longer be true. Scenarios look for alternate possible futures and looks for early warning signs that such a divergent future is eminent. Scenarios often are combined with Disaster Recovery Planning (Business Continuity Plans) if the scenario might result in business disruptions. As an example, the product pipeline planning (the IP Plan) can benefit greatly from looking at future disruptive technologies.

Scenario planning might be done every two to three years. But the scenarios need to be played against the business strategies to consider flexibility under various scenarios of the future.

Delphi Method team planning techniques can be used well, especially at early stages of the scenario planning process. Delphi helps to minimize some of the weaknesses of team planning such as group think.