Regional scenario planning in practice: Irrigation futures of the Goulburn Broken Region

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Scenario planning is an approach to strategic planning. It acknowledges the uncertainties and ambiguities of the future and seeks to identify ways to strengthen the strategic position of an organisation in that uncertain environment. Van der Heijden (1996) identifies that good strategic planning should be based on four common-sense elements:

• understanding of the aims and purpose of the entity;
• an assessment of the organisation’s characteristics, including its capability to change;
• an assessment of the organisation’s current and future operating environments; and
• an assessment of the fit between the organisation’s characteristics and its environment.

This analysis of an organisation and its environment can then provide the basis for developing strategies, which should be designed to improve the fit between the organisation’s characteristics and its current and future operating environments.

Scenario planning develops and uses scenarios that describe alternative plausible operating environments that may confront an organisation in the future. Typically, when using scenario planning several scenarios are created to acknowledge that the future is uncertain and a range of conditions are possible. Scenario planning then uses these scenarios to develop strategies that are robust for a range of plausible future environments.