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 and manage 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

Create a what-if scenario or copy from an existing one.

Prerequisites:

To create a what-if scenario for a portfolio:

  1. From the main menu, click Portfolio Management > What-if Analysis.
  2. On the What-if Analysis page, click Add.

  3. In the Add Scenario dialog box, 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 perform what-if analysis.

  4. Click Done.

    A scenario is created for the selected portfolio, with the portfolio content included in the scenario, as described in the table below. After the creation of the scenario, updates made to the portfolio are automatically synced to the scenario by default. You can choose to manually sync the updates based on your needs. For details, see Sync portfolio updates to scenarios.

    Data in scenario Details
    Contents

    Includes portfolio entities that:

    • Have both start and end dates specified.
    • Fall within the scenario's time range. For details about scenario time range, see Set scenario time range.

    You can also manually add entities from the portfolio. For details, see Add content to a scenario.

    Demanded budget

    Calculated from the financial summary of each content in the portfolio.

    Note: For programs in the portfolio, only the costs of included items are calculated; the program cost itself is excluded.

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

To copy a what-if scenario:

  1. On the What-if Analysis page, select the scenario to copy and click the Copy button .

  2. In the Copy Scenario dialog box, provide a name for the copied scenario and click Done.

    The copied scenario is created for the same portfolio, with all configurations duplicated. You can then make any necessary changes.

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Set 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 set a time range for a scenario:

  1. Open the scenario details page.

  2. At the top right of the page, locate the Calendar button .

  3. Click the Calendar 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 changes made to a what-if scenario are retained when switching to another layout template.

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See also: