Quality Key Figures for Developing Future Scenarios

Abstract

The usefulness of the consistency-based Scenario-Technique depends on expertise in identifying future influence factors, assessing their relationships as well as aggregating raw scenarios into alternative visions of the future. Typically, three alternative scenarios are developed, including extrema like positive and negative futures. In this paper, a new set of quality key figures is developed for the selection of these scenarios to reduce room for interpretation and to increase their quality. The three quality key figures include normal distribution, consistency and differentiability. These quality key figures are used iteratively to achieve an optimal balance. For validation purpose, Scenario-Technique was implemented in an internationally active mechanical engineering company for strategy alignments. The resulting future scenarios were developed and integrated into the strategy in eight workshops and three iterations with managing directors. The new metrics proposed in this paper help to create reliable future scenarios for the strategy.

Keywords: Scenario-Technique, development of future scenarios, quality key figures, business planning

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005553