Talk:Scenario planning

Contingency Planning
It is important enough to be in Wikipedia. Good examples constrast good and bad planning. Contrast the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition's recovery from disaster, with the Donner Party's wagon train expedition and its catastrophic succession of disasters. Shackleton had contingency plans that quickly diverged from the causes of each mishap; the Donner party stubbornly tried to pursue a linear course without any contingency or escape plans. I don't know enough about it though, the two are a veritable yin and yang of planning. what is contigency planning

"Terrible piece" Not sure about the nature of these discussions, but this is a terrible article on scenario planning. I agree with the comments below. WIth 13 years of experience in this field and having run million dollar scenario processes, I cannot recognize the practice of scenario thinking in the piece. We run a public wiki http://scenariothinking.org which is mostly for the benefit of my MBA students and there is significant material on scenario thinking (100 scenario sets -some great, some OK). It is #1 on Google, Bing et al. How to make these things work together? daniel@dtn.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.145.254.31 (talk) 10:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

New topic by a new person:

The article on scenario planning is ridiculously bad. I tried editing it in June, rather naively replacing most of it because it was flat-out wrong. I have been a professional practitioner of scenario planning for 15 years, with clients including some of the largest business and government organizations in the world. Whoever wrote the present article has an extremely narrow and specific and out-of-date view of what scenario planning is.

Take the phrase "The games combine known facts about the future...." THERE ARE NO "KNOWN FACTS ABOUT THE FUTURE." That is precisely why scenarios can be so useful. Anyone who could write such a ridiculous statement has no business writing anything about scenario planning.

Heck, it's not even logical. The section "Crafting Scenarios" begins with the words "These combinations and permutations of fact and related social changes are called 'scenarios.' " WHAT "combinations?" There's nothing foregoing that this sentence could possibly be referring to!

Now I realize that as a professional and someone who actually makes money at this, I could be therefore disqualified from commenting, since I have a pecuniary interest in promoting my type of scenario planning. But is Wikipedia supposed to be populated purely by people who don't know their derriere from a hole in the ground with respect to the topics on Wikipedia?

I guess I will go off and keep my fifteen years of intimate working knowledge of this approach to myself. No skin off my nose, right? Let all the people who stumble over this page think that it's the product of "military intelligence." News to my friends in the military! They use our version and would not recognize the disjointed methodology presented here as the only way to do scenario planning.

Evidently it serves someone else's pecuniary interest to continue to have a raft of inaccuracies on the "Scenario Planning" Wikipedia entry. I've tried to correct it once. I won't waste any more time trying to keep others from being comprehensively misinformed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marrenp (talk • contribs) 12:32, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you bring up some valid points and I agree with you this article could be written better. But the diversity and complexity of how scenario planning does make it complicated.  Perhaps more caveats should be included etc, but in the formation of scenario planning, they did have "facts and knowns" such as allies and enemies.  these would then translate into wargames more famously known as red vs. blue.  This is because the scenarios were more short-term and used for a specific purpose.  Of course, scenario planning has evolved greatly in both the military and the business realm.  I believe the example and steps listed here just show the origins and how it was done in the past.  I can't say and like you, shy to edit since i didn't add that contribution, but I believe that was the purpose.
 * Therefore I would urge you to keep trying to improve this section as well. Your 15 years would no doubt be helpful as long as it approaches scenario planning as a general process vs. a specific step-by-step methodology.  Even looking at the referenced books and articles, the steps and terms they use vary greatly (e.g. STEEPA vs STEEP vs PESTLE etc).  However there must be a way to present scenario planning generically so that a casual reader understands the origins of yester and the application of today. Fshen (talk) 20:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Linkfarm - Companies Offering Scenario Planning Services
This section, with the links included, is a blatant violation of WP:EL, WP:SPAM, and WP:NOTLINK. --Ronz (talk) 16:27, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I read those guidelines and to me, the links are not a blatant violation. If they are a violation, that distinction would be subjective. In no way are those links spamming or advertising. Each of those organizations listed below contain copyrighted material that sheds more light into the topic. You can view and download information regarding methodology, process, and even in some case actual scenarios. Looking at "Links to Avoid," the links fit into none of those categories. Are they not pages that "contain further research that is accurate and on-topic; information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail; or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy."? I didn't reinclude them, but to me they should be included to help readers learn more about scenario planning. Does the heading need to be changed? I'm not sure what the issue and violation is, but any clarification would be helpful. Fshen (talk) 17:01, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for not reverting again.
 * It's an interesting situation, having a sourced list of consultants. What do we do with it?  I'd say remove it as being overly promotional, giving undue weight to the information, and generally being unencyclopedic per WP:NOTDIRECTORY (in addition to WP:NOTLINK and  WP:SOAP).  I'd like to get others' opinions though. --Ronz (talk) 17:13, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree it's a difficult one. These are respected and recognized institutions, hence the citation.  Other companies that people have tried to add have been removed since that is promotional.  However, how do you point people to more resources on the topic from respected leaders in that methodology without copying and pasting (against copyright) or linking to their sites?  Should it be renamed to "Noted resources for scenario planning" instead?  And if links are included, should they directly go to the articles instead of the landing page? Fshen (talk) 20:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * How about a third opinion? I'll make a request. --Ronz (talk) 21:27, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Third opinion here. I agree that these links are a violation of the aforementioned. Furthermore, the step by step guide seems to violate WP:NOTGUIDE. -Freqsh0 (talk) 20:13, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Another 3rd opinion. I agree with Freqsh0 on both counts. The links clearly do not satisfy the criteria of WP:ELYES; nor do they clearly meet the criteria in WP:ELMAYBE. I suggest a single link, as follows:
 * or pick your own dmoz page (maybe create one?) and use that. Eubulides (talk) 23:53, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Great comments. Thanks for the third op and good job Ronz. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fshen (talk • contribs) 06:13, 14 January 2009
 * Thanks everyone for the comments. Yes, dmoz would be a good approach. --Ronz (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone for the comments. Yes, dmoz would be a good approach. --Ronz (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixing the Process section
IMO the process section is not too long and not descriptive enough. Particularly, the version of the 'Shell' approach should actually reflect the 8 step approach proposed in Peter Schwarz's Art of the Long View, this being THE definitive book on scenario building (and being based on the Shell approach). In addition a second category, being the 'Critical Uncertainties Approach' should be included, since these describe one of the most popular methods of scenario building for non-experts. The criticisms section in this article specifically refer to scenarios created using this appraoch, so it should be considered within the article. These are my initial thoughts on how the section should look. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anthony F. Camilleri (talk • contribs) 01:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Foresight and Scenario Planning
Dear colleagues, will you explain to me what the differences between the scenario planning and foresight? Vip (talk) 09:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Improving the Article & Foresight
This article does cover many aspects of scenario planning, unfortunately it is not very comprehensive and provides a fairly narrow and limited view of scenario planning. I will start suggesting various edits to different sections as time permits. I started with the first paragrph of the hostory section today.

What is the difference between foresight and scenario planning? Very little other than scope. In regards to business and social planning, foresight is often used to describe an oprganizations effort to anticipate the future as it relates the organizations concerns. Scenario planning is proposed as one method to anticipate the future. There are other methods such as forecasting/prediction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.106.253.163 (talk) 08:17, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

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Copyright problem removed
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