Create a what-if scenario

A what-if analysis scenario is a simulated situation that you use for experiment. In a what-if scenario, you can see what would happen if you invest a defined budget and resources on different portfolios of contents. This section describes how to create a what-if scenario for a portfolio.

Identify investment initiatives

Before using what-if analysis for your strategic planning, you should identify your investment initiatives and include them in a portfolio, including:

  1. Identify and collect all your investment initiatives, including in-flight projects, proposed projects, and completed projects for maintenance.
  2. Create projects for in-flight projects, proposals for proposed projects, and assets for maintenance projects in PPM.
  3. Create staffing profiles for these entities to track the resource demand, and create financial summaries to track the forecast cost.
  4. Create a portfolio to group the investment initiatives.

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Create a what-if scenario

This section describes how to create a what-if scenario for a portfolio.

To create a what-if scenario for a portfolio:

Prerequisite:

  1. From the PPM menu, click Open > Portfolio Management.
  2. In the upper-right corner, click What-if Analysis.
  3. In the What-if Analysis page, click Add.

  4. In the Add Scenario window, complete the following fields:

    Field Details
    Name Provide a unique name for the scenario.
    Scenario Create for

    From the drop-down list, select the target portfolio for which you want to do what-if analysis.

  5. Click Done.

    What-if Analysis fetches data from the portfolio and synchronizes it with the corresponding scenario. Whenever the portfolio is updated, the data is automatically synced to the scenario.

    The following table lists the data mapping between the scenario and the selected portfolio:

    Data in scenario Details
    Content

    Includes the portfolio contents that have specified both start and end dates, and whose time period falls in the scenario time range.

    Demanded budget

    Calculated from the financial summary of each of the contents in the selected portfolio.

    Note: When calculating the costs of programs within a scenario, only the costs associated with the items under the program are included, the cost of the program itself is not included.

    Demanded resources Calculated from the staffing profile of each of the contents in the selected portfolio.

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Select scenario time range

When you create a new scenario, it reflects the data and projections for the current year. You can select a different time range for the scenario.

To select the time range for scenario simulation:

  1. Open the scenario details page.

  2. At the top right of the page, locate the time range button.

  3. Click the time range button, and select a start period and end period for the scenario.

    The scenario details page is automatically updated to display the data and projections for the selected time period.

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Switch scenario layout templates

You can use various layout templates for a scenario to perform what-if analysis from different perspectives.

To use a different layout template for scenario:

  1. Open the scenario details page. In the top-right corner of the page, you can find the layout template currently used by the scenario.

  2. Click the down arrow and select a different layout template.

    The templates available for selection meet the following requirements:

    • The templates are published.
    • The templates can be used for the portfolio type of the current portfolio.

    The changes made to a what-if scenario are retained when switching to another layout template.

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Next steps: