Course curriculum

    1. Welcome

    2. Course overview

    3. Glossary - Get yourself familiarized with key terms

    4. Activity - Let's check your understanding on each term

    5. What are scenarios and why are they important?

    6. Why exploratory scenarios?

    7. Knowledge check

    8. Additional Resources

    1. How to get started

    2. Identifying the four parameters

    3. Example – Defining the four parameters

    4. Experts discuss the four parameters

    5. Framing your scenarios and identifying the parameters

    6. Exercise & Reflection

    7. Stakeholder Consultation and Engagement

    8. Time required to build scenarios

    9. Selecting the scope and parameters for building scenarios

    10. Knowledge check

    11. Additional resources

    1. Introduction

    2. What we know, what we don’t know and what we need to know

    3. Knowledge mapping - Questions to ask & data capture

    4. Knowledge mapping - Structural analysis

    5. Knowledge mapping - Reducing Complexity

    6. Identifying the ‘givens’ (elements of stability) in your system

    7. Identifying the ‘uncertainties’ in your system

    8. Stakeholder consultations

    9. Facilitating online workshop

    10. Tips and best practices for online workshops

    11. Reflection exercise

    12. Next steps

    13. Additional resources

    1. What can we confidently predict and what is uncertain?

    2. Developing assumptions

    3. Developing hypotheses

    4. Cognitive bias and fast and slow thinking

    5. Tips for developing assumptions & uncertainties

    6. Next step - Exercise

    7. Identifying assumptions and hypotheses - knowledge check

    8. Additional resources

    1. Building a credible story about the future

    2. Developing the scenario ‘threads’

    3. Connecting the hypotheses to build your scenario 'threads'

    4. Scenario narratives

    5. Defining monitoring indicators for each scenario

    6. Activity - Recognizing defining features or 'burning questions' in your context

    7. Scenario triggers

    8. Tips for defining indicators and triggers

    9. Next steps

    10. Additional resources

    1. Introduction

    2. Building scenarios are only half the job!

    3. Impact analysis

    4. Assigning likelihood to scenarios

    5. Key implications and considerations for your organization

    6. Presenting your scenarios and analysis

    7. Tips - Using the scenarios

    8. Additional resources

    9. Tips - Interlinking scenario building with actor analysis

    10. Scenario-based planning and assessing robustness

    11. Activity - Analysing the impact of your scenarios

    12. Activity - Analysing the impact of your scenario (Continued)

    13. Knowledge check

    14. The bottom line!

About this course

  • Free
  • This course has been designed for humanitarian and development professionals. It is meant to help you make informed and strategic decisions when working in complex and changing contexts. Scenario building and planning will allow you to better manage uncertainties and enhance your opportunities to build better futures.
  • No prior experience of foresight analysis is required to take this course. After taking it, you will know what scenario building is, what steps to take to build robust exploratory scenarios, what to expect from this process, and how to use scenario analysis for strategic decision-making.
  • This course has been developed as a collaboration between the Context Analysis and Foresight Unit (CAFU) at Save the Children and the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership (CHL) at Deakin University. [Credits - Photo banner: Save the Children, 2020; Photo course card: Jonathan Hyams / Save the Children, 2018]