Using judgment to anticipate the future

This chapter discusses judgmental probability forecasting, judgmental adjustments to time series forecasting, the Delphi method, and the intuitive logics method of developing scenarios. I describe and discuss the use of scenarios in a practical case example, and I discuss this range of judgment methods as alternative ways of forecasting and anticipating the future. We will see that judgmental probability forecasting, adjustments to time series, and Delphi are focussed on forecasting single quantities, or outcomes. By contrast, scenario thinking produces broad-brush anticipations of the future that are narrative-based and closely linked to the underpinning formulation and evaluation of strategy and decisions.