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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

Scenario Planning for PPM

The Scenario Planning for PPM application provides a central location for portfolio managers to create and track the roadmap for project execution for a given fiscal year. Optimize your budget and resource usage by creating and comparing different scenarios for your project and demand roadmap or resources.

Important: Starting with Australia release, Scenario Planning for PPM (com.snc.ppm_scenario_planning) is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer available for activation but will continue to be supported. For details, see the Deprecation Process [KB0867184] article in the Now Support knowledge base.

Alternatively, Strategic Planning Workspace (for SPM pro users) or Portfolio Planning Workspace (for SPM standard users) provides the Scenario Planning capability. For details, see Scenario planning in Strategic Planning or Scenario planning in Portfolio Planning.

A scenario is a collection of demands and projects that serves as a planning instance for the selected fiscal year to support funding decisions.

Eligible demands and projects in the portfolio are collected into a default or existing scenario of the planning cycle. You use the default or existing scenario as a basis to create additional scenarios. A demand or project can belong to more than one scenario in the current planning cycle but it cannot belong to more than one portfolio. For more information, see Create planning scenarios.

Features

The Scenario Planning for PPM provides the following capabilities to portfolio managers:

  • Plan your portfolio based on resource capacity for a single year or multiple years.
  • Break down your multiple year portfolio planning in smaller planning windows for continuous tracking and planning adjustment.
  • Allocate budget to demands and projects in your portfolio from Investment Funding.
  • Create scenario-based plans for portfolios.
  • Apply filters to refine your list of selected demands and projects in your portfolio.
  • Experiment with different combinations of demands and projects in planning scenarios.
  • View details of demands and projects that are not aligned with your strategic goals.
  • Edit the way demands and projects are funded for each scenario.
  • Compare different scenarios to assess outcomes of various project and demand combinations.
  • Confirm a planning scenario that best aligns with your organizational objectives as your current portfolio plan.
  • Override a previously confirmed planning scenario based on changing priorities and environment.
  • View budget details such as actual and planned costs, projects, and demands not aligned to goals and strategies, and actual costs for the projects.
  • View resource utilization and allocation.
  • View demands and projects with over-allocated resources.

  • Install Scenario Planning for PPM
    Install the Scenario Planning for PPM application from ServiceNow Store applications. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

  • Annual and multi-year resource capacity-based planning
    Plan your portfolios using scenarios for a single fiscal year or multiple years after analyzing utilization of resources against available capacity. Include demands and projects in all portfolios or a single portfolio to evaluate, prioritize, and select demands and projects that match your business objectives.
  • Configure the scenario planning type and scope
    Configure the scenario planning type and select the scope of portfolios to determine the way you want to plan and work on your portfolios. You can also specify using Investment Funding for funding demands and projects in your portfolios.
  • Set target budget for a fiscal year
    When planning for a portfolio or all portfolios, start by selecting the fiscal period for the demands and projects that you want to work with. You then set the target amounts for both operating and capital expenses of portfolios when Scenario Planning is not integrated with Investment Funding.
  • Create planning scenarios
    Create planning scenarios with different combinations of projects and demands in your portfolio. Experiment with different scenarios to plan your budget expenditure for a fiscal year.
  • Compare planning scenarios
    Compare various planning scenarios with your current or default plan to assess different combinations of projects and demands in your portfolio for execution. You can perform a what-if analysis and determine the planning scenario that optimally achieves the target budget and uses your resources.
  • Confirm a planning scenario
    Select and confirm a scenario to allocate budget and resources for executing the selected demands and projects in a fiscal year.
  • Track the progress of a portfolio
    After confirming a scenario to complete planning of your portfolio, track the progress of the portfolio. You can also monitor the status of cost, resource, schedule, and scope for the selected fiscal period or planning window for the portfolio.

Parent Topic:Portfolio Management

Related topics

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Portfolio Dashboard