Scenario management: An interdisciplinary approach

Scenario management (SM) means different things to different people, even though everyone seems to admit its current importance and its further potential. In this paper, we seek to provide an interdisciplinary framework for SM from three major disciplines that use scenarios - strategic management, human-computer interaction, and software and systems engineering - to deal with description of current and future realities. In particular, we attempt to answer the following questions: How are scenarios developed and used in each of the three disciplines? Why are they becoming important? What are current research contributions in scenario management? What are the research and practical issues related to the creation and use of scenarios, in particular in the area of requirements engineering? Based on brainstorming techniques, this paper proposes an interdisciplinary definition of scenarios, frameworks for scenario development, use and evaluation, and directions for future research.