Scenario Planning (SP) exercises can differ depending on the industry and managerial level. Strategic leadership, information system leadership, and academia all view SP differently.

Before understanding SP, we need to wade through the sometimes-confusing terms of Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recover (DR) (Burger et al., 2020; Camera et al., 2011; Sawalha, 2021). I view Business Continuity Planning (BCP), or Business Continuity (BC), as an umbrella topic and Disaster Recovery (DR) as a sub-discipline of BC focused on the recovery of key data for information systems. Together, these capabilities are referred to as BCDR.  SP enters the conversation to support BCDR efforts in various ways described below.

Shell Corporation shaped SP from a business strategy perspective since the 1970s (Wilkinson, 2013). Shell viewed scenarios as asking, “what if?” questions and “encouraging managers to consider events that may only be remote possibilities and stretch their thinking.”

The purposes of SP for BCDR differ slightly from those presented by the business-focused Shell method. Instead of only using the SP exercise to think creatively about what could happen, SP in BCDR is also concerned with giving managers an immersive experience that enhances their skills. I’ve found it beneficial to differentiate between the type of SP encouraged by Shell and the type of SP to enhance skills. I label Shell’s approach as Exploratory SP (ExplorSP) and then the approach of SP to improve skills as Experiential SP (ExperSP). ExplorSP embraces novelty. ExperSP embraces realism in response.

Benefits of ExplorSP and ExperSP

There are different benefits associated with ExplorSP and ExperSP. ExplorSP helps managers consider novel scenarios that deviate from the status quo. In the BCDR context, ExplorSP encourages managers to consider the unusual ways things could go wrong. These managers are usually paid to be enthusiastic cheerleaders for strategic initiatives, so thinking about what happens when things go wrong can often feel uncomfortable. The ExplorSP experience gives them permission to explore these possibilities.

ExperSP also has many benefits. The immersive aspect of ExperSP means that all participants can experience a little dose of the pressure that will arise during a real emergency. This serves as stress inoculation and increases their confidence during an actual emergency. The ExperSP experience provides a much more realistic set of findings than other approaches that may take a checklist approach to control analysis.

Both scenario planning types allow stakeholders from different parts of the organization to meet in a creative discussion. This has immediate benefits for team building. Nothing beats face-to-face communication, except face-to-face communication while trying to think about adverse situations. This discussion must include expansive thinking about possibilities and hard-hitting discussions about realistic response times.

References

• Althobaiti, W. A., & Aloraini, S. A. (2019). Toward Optimum Resiliency: Practical Alignment of BCM and ERM Processes. 2019 4th International Conference on System Reliability and Safety (ICSRS), pp. 262–266. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSRS48664.2019.8987615
• Burger, M., Smith, L. M., & Wood, J. (2020). Recent Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Strategies. Internal Auditing, 35(1), 12–19.
• Camara, S., Crossler, R., Midha, V., & Wallace, L. (2011). Teaching Case: Bank Solutions Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: A Case Study for Business Students. Journal of Information Systems Education, 22(2), 117–122.
• Sahoo, S., Xu, S., Ferdousi, S., Hirota, Y., Tornatore, M., Awaji, Y., & Mukherjee, B. (2022). Strategic Cooperation among Datacenter Providers and Optical-Network Carriers for Disaster Recovery. GLOBECOM 2022 – 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference, pp. 2151–2156. https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOBECOM48099.2022.10001409
• Sawalha, I. H. (2021). Views on business continuity and disaster recovery. International Journal of Emergency Services, 10(3), 351–365. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJES-12-2020-0074
• Shell Global. Shell Scenarios. July 16, 2023. https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/scenarios.html
• Wilkinson, A., & Kupers, R. (2013, May 1). Living in the Futures. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/05/living-in-the-futures