Optimizing planning with scenario planning in Portfolio Planning

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Optimizing planning with scenario planning in Portfolio Planning

    Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning enables portfolio managers to optimize their planning by simulating multiple potential portfolio outcomes. This helps assess alignment with strategic goals, compare budget impacts, and select the best scenario as the live portfolio plan. The feature supports iterative adjustments throughout planning or execution cycles, facilitating informed decision-making to balance resources and objectives.

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    Scenario Planning Tabs and Functions

    • Prioritization Tab: Add, remove, and adjust planning items and their dates within a scenario to align with strategic priorities.
    • Roadmap Tab: Visualize planning items on a Gantt chart timeline; drag bars to adjust item start and end dates across the portfolio.
    • Financials Tab: Set custom budget targets, allocate budgets by expense or cost type (Capex and Opex), and compare allocated budgets against targets using an outcomes panel. This enables simulation of different budget scenarios to analyze monetary benefits and feasibility.

    Financial Scenario Planning

    Financial planning is supported for Epics, Projects, and Demands planning items, allowing portfolio managers and strategic planners to:

    • Define portfolio budget targets over various planning cycles (monthly, quarterly, yearly, or up to 5 years).
    • Prioritize items to ensure execution fits within budget constraints while maximizing financial benefits.
    • Use simulation mode to test multiple budget combinations and make data-driven tradeoffs.
    • Personalize views with time scale and range filters to manage budgets according to organizational cadence.
    • Note: Budget allocation property must be enabled to allocate budget at the portfolio level.

    Outcomes Panel

    The outcomes panel summarizes financial data for the scenario, including:

    • Target and allocated budgets for Capex and Opex
    • Utilized and remaining budget
    • Monetary benefits from in-plan items
    • Actual costs from out-of-plan items

    Color indicators provide quick insights into budget status:

    • Red text or progress bars indicate budget targets not set or exceeded
    • Green text and bars indicate budget compliance within targets

    Scenario Planning Features

    • Create scenarios: Generate scenarios from current or other plans to simulate changes.
    • Compare scenarios: Review scenarios side by side with the live plan to evaluate tradeoffs and item changes.
    • Approve scenarios: Select and approve the optimal scenario, which becomes the new live portfolio plan.
    • Manage scenarios: Rename, view, or delete scenarios as needed.

    Use Cases

    • Fiscal Year Planning: Portfolio managers can create and compare multiple scenarios to prioritize items aligned with strategic goals, collaborating with program and financial teams to approve the best plan.
    • Mid-Cycle Reprioritization: Managers can update scenarios to reflect changing priorities mid-year, incorporate stakeholder feedback, and finalize adjusted plans.

    Practical Considerations

    • Financial scenario planning requires migrating from Legacy Investment Funding to the new experience.
    • Use scenario planning throughout planning or execution cycles, such as regular planning, quarterly, or financial reviews.

    As a portfolio manager, optimize your portfolio planning by comparing potential outcomes, assessing their alignment with strategic goals, and approving the best scenario as your live plan.

    Scenario planning items in the Prioritization tab

    The Prioritization tab of the Scenario page enables you to add and remove planning items to/from a scenario and adjust their dates.

    Prioritization tab of the Scenario screen

    Scenario planning items in the Roadmap tab

    The Roadmap tab displays a Gantt chart-like view of the planning items in the scenario, showing their planned start and end dates across the portfolio plan timeline. Using the Roadmap tab, you can drag the bars representing planning items across the timeline to adjust their dates.

    Roadmap tab of the Scenario screen

    Scenario planning items in Financials tab

    The Financials tab of the Scenario page enables you to set custom targets, budget, and compare the allocated budget against target using the outcomes panel.

    Financials tab in Scenario planning view detailing the budget and forecast values of planning items.

    Portfolio Manager can simulate multiple scenarios with different budget combinations and compare their outcomes to arrive at an informed decision to balance the resources and strategic objectives. Using the financials view in Scenario planning, you can get a simulation mode for the financial information. Using this view, the strategic planning users such as Portfolio managers, Program managers, or Portfolio user working on the portfolios, can set a portfolio budget target for a particular planning cycle, which could be a monthly, quarterly, yearly, or beyond a year up to 5 years. Using this defined budget, portfolio users can prioritize the planning items within the portfolio to analyze if the prioritized items can be executed within their portfolio budget, while reviewing the monetary benefit from the prioritized items.
    Important:
    Enable the budget allocation property to allocate budget to your planning items at portfolio-level and configure the budget attributes to allocate budget by expense type or cost type.

    Create multiple scenarios to compare them, and work with your stakeholders to approve an ideal plan with better monetary benefit returns. Once approved, the approved Scenario will become your new portfolio plan for the defined planning cycle. For more information to know about the changes happening in a portfolio after scenario approval, see Approve a scenario.

    You can perform financial scenario planning throughout your planning or execution cycle depending on your organization needs such as at your regular planning cycles, quarterly reviews, or financial review cycles. Financials in scenario planning helps you to arrive at an informed decision and customize the portfolio planning to match with your organization needs.
    Note:
    • Finanicals in scenario planning is supported only for Epics, Projects, and Demands type of planning items.
    • Customers using the Legacy Investment Funding should migrate to new experience to work on the financial scenario planning.

    Personalize your scenario planning financials view using the Time scale and Range filters. Manage the budget of your planning items by monthly, quarterly, or yearly cadence depending on the planning cycle of your organization.

    Outcomes panel in Scenario planning

    The outcomes panel in the simulation indicates the financial information of the portfolio such as target and budget amounts for Capex and Opex, set budget target for this simulation, utilized and remaining budget from the target, benefit from the In-plan items, and the actual costs accounting from the out of plan items. The aggregated data is fetched based on the portfolio timeline range including the target and budget data.

    Representations in outcomes panel for the identification.
    Table 1. Outcomes panel representation
    Indication Definition
    Red text for amount without progress bar indication for Total Simulated Budget No defined or set target amount for this scenario.
    Red text for amount and red progress bar for Total Simulated Budget Total allocated budget for planning items exceeds the scenario's set target amount.
    Red text amount for Capex Budget Capex Budget allocations exceed the scenario's Capex target.
    Red text amount for Opex Budget Opex Budget allocations exceed the scenario's Opex target.
    Green text for budget amounts and green progress bar Budget allocation for each expense types and total budget is within the scenario's set target.

    Scenario planning features

    In scenario planning, you can perform the following actions:
    Feature Description
    Create a scenario Create a scenario from the current plan, or another scenario, in a simulated environment to compare the scenario with the live plan and other scenarios.
    Compare scenarios Compare scenarios and the live plan side by side to review tradeoffs and items added or removed from the plans.
    Approve a scenario Approve the best scenario.
    Manage scenarios View list of scenarios, rename scenarios, and delete scenarios.

    Scenario planning use cases

    The following are high-level use cases for scenario planning.
    • Fiscal year planning: Megan Burke, Portfolio Manager at ACME Inc, is planning for the next fiscal year and is required to prioritize planning items and align them with the organizational strategic goals. Megan creates a scenario for the portfolio plan and then uses the Prioritization tab to align items with goals. Megan holds discussions with program managers and with the financial team, creates multiple scenarios, and compares them. Megan approves the optimal scenario as a well-aligned strategic portfolio plan for the next fiscal year.
    • Mid-cycle reprioritization; Changed priorities emerging mid-year require adjustments to the current portfolio plan. John Doe, the product manager at ACME Inc, creates a scenario and incorporates the changed priorities. John adjusts the plan based on the program manager's and financial team's feedback and finalizes the plan.