branchingscenarier

Branching scenarios, or branchingscenarier, are narrative planning tools used to illustrate how decisions and uncertain events can lead to different futures. They present a central storyline that splits at defined decision points into multiple branches, allowing stakeholders to explore outcomes without committing to a single forecast.

A typical branching scenario includes scenes, decision nodes, and divergent outcomes. At each node a choice is made or an uncertainty is resolved, and the story continues along one or more branches. Branches can carry qualitative descriptions or be annotated with probabilities, impact estimates, or risk levels to indicate relative likelihoods and consequences.

Branching scenarios are closely related to scenario planning, decision trees, and event trees. They are used to support strategic thinking, risk assessment, and policy analysis by making causal relationships, dependencies, and potential trade-offs visible. They are also employed in product development, education, training, and user experience design to simulate how different actions affect objectives over time.

Benefits include clearer visualization of multiple futures, improved decision-making under uncertainty, and enhanced stakeholder engagement. Limitations involve potential complexity as the number of branches grows, the risk of subjective biases, and the need for regular updates as drivers change. Good practice emphasizes defining clear objectives, identifying key drivers, constraining the number of branches, documenting assumptions, and validating scenarios with stakeholders.

A simple example might model a product launch with branches for market success, modest uptake, or failure, each leading to different operational paths and resource requirements.