Creating Larger Scale Scenarios
This article describes how to create broad scope scenarios either in terms of project or organization hierarchy.
Overview
There are cases where the scope of a scenario planning effort will be very broad, going well beyond single project planning. Examples include:
Major program phase gate reviews
A multi-project initiative is added to the current plan
Annual operating planning
Organization exception re-planning
Ad hoc re-planning by a single functional manager
The same decisions about the scenario are required in all of these cases:
Is it private or public?
Is the scenario an addition to the current plan or will it replace its portion of the current plan?
Which projects are included?
Program Phase Review Scenario
If substantial changes to the program plan are required for an upcoming phase review, you can create a program scenario to insulate the current forecast from the re-planning activity. For example, the hierarchy structure of the Product B program appears in the screen shot below.
1. On the Project Data page select the selection checkbox at the left of the program row (in this example, Product B).
2. Click the Baselines & Scenarios icon in the top left toolbar icon group and select Create Scenario.
3. Enter scenario attributes in the dialog.
Make the scenario public – all functional managers/planners who have rights can participate separately in the planning.
Include children and assignments – all sub-projects and all labor and financial assignments will be in the scenario.
4. Click the Create button in the dialog.
In this example, the only project selected on Project Data page is Product B, the program root project. But all projects are captured in the scenario because Include Children was selected.
Whole Organization Scenarios
The steps to create and plan a scenario for your entire functional organization are essentially the same whether high or low on the resource OBS.
The following steps create a scenario for an organization re-plan.
1. Click the data reload funnel icon in the upper right application toolbar icon group.
2. Select project OBS nodes that contain all projects that have, or are likely to have, assignments for your resource node(s) during scenario planning.
You can limit the projects loaded to those that already have assignments to your resource node with the Load Projects With Assignments Only checkbox.
DO NOT CHECK THIS CHECKBOX IF some projects without current assignments need to be planned in the scenario.
(They can of course be added to the scenario later after a Reload with the checkbox unchecked.)
3. Select your resource OBS node(s).
4. Click the Reload Data button and go to the Project Data page.
5. Click the Select All checkbox at the upper left of the table.
6. Click the Baselines & Scenarios icon in the upper left toolbar icon group and click Create Scenario.
5. Fill out the dialog and click Create.
