- Working definition: Scenario needs a published definition, population, evidence source, owner, operating consequence, effective date, and review condition.
- Business purpose: Scenario makes one territory-design decision inspectable instead of allowing the current assignment or loudest stakeholder to become the rule.
- Mechanics: Define the trigger, required inputs, decision owner, ordered steps, output, effective date, and exception or restart path.
- Operating context: Use Scenario during planning, scenario review, activation, and material in-year changes while keeping current and proposed states separate.
- Practical test: Walk one ordinary case and one edge case through Scenario, naming every handoff, approval, output, and effective-date consequence.
- BoogieBoard doctrine: Publish the Scenario standard before reviewing assignments so its tradeoffs remain visible and the approved sequence cannot be reverse-engineered from preferred outcomes.
What is Scenario?
A versioned territory design produced by a specific combination of logic, goals, data, locks, and assignments, with the definition, owner, evidence, and review timing published before assignments are approved. It becomes operational when the population, source evidence, owner, and consequence are explicit enough for another reviewer to reproduce.
Start Scenario with a precise statement of the decision it governs. In the design & equity context, that decision should define a territory decision that planners, leaders, managers, and sellers can inspect against a published standard. Its definition should exclude adjacent decisions that use different evidence, owners, or consequences.
A complete Scenario definition identifies its trigger, starting state, required inputs, decision owner, ordered steps, output, effective date, and restart or exception path. The workflow is incomplete if a handoff depends on private context.
Place Scenario in a learning sequence with Balance Goal, Balance Attribute, Account Locking Criteria, Territory Logic. The sequence should show which concept defines the input, which governs the decision, and which records the resulting operating state.
What Scenario requires
Start with governed account data, role definitions, Territory Logic, Balance Goals, Account Locking Criteria, and a dated Current State Scenario. Record the field or policy owner, source date, transformation, comparison population, and correction path. If any required input is unavailable, mark the limitation rather than filling it with an undocumented proxy. That preserves the difference between observed evidence and planning judgment.
A single change to any one of the Scenario components results in a new Scenario. This is how versioning gets out of control during the design process. You already prepared in Step #1 for decision-making. Instead of allowing a single ping to derail you into a new Scenario or version, gather inputs holistically.
Run Scenario against a preserved current state before changing live assignments. Record the starting condition, each decision and handoff, the proposed output, and the effective date. That creates a comparison point when timing, hiring, evidence, or policy changes later.
The operating record for Scenario should show each case's trigger date, owner, current step, pending decision, due date, output, and final effective state. Aggregate reporting can reveal delays, but the case record must explain where and why a specific item stopped. That evidence supports both daily administration and later process redesign. Before approval, ask a reviewer outside the original design team to reproduce the Scenario result or decision from that retained evidence.
How Scenario works step by step
The team applies Scenario to a dated territory scenario only after publishing its definition and affected population. It keeps the current state intact, models the proposed rule across every comparable account, and identifies records excluded by an approved lock or exception.
Reviewers compare the summary result with the underlying account roster. They inspect one expected outcome and one surprising outcome, tracing the source evidence, hierarchy, Territory Logic, Balance Goals, lock status, and proposed assignment. A result that cannot be explained at account level is not ready for approval.
The approved scenario records before and after assignments, effective timing, exceptions, and rollback instructions. After activation, the operating state is reconciled to the approved model so Scenario remains a governed part of territory design rather than a label applied after decisions were made.
Scenario variations and decision points
Scenario may vary by segment, role, customer motion, geography, product, and planning stage when the business reason is published. Each population still needs an internally consistent standard and a clear explanation of why its treatment differs.
Test the rule against ordinary cases, edge cases, vacancies, and material in-year changes. Review both the summary outcome and underlying account roster. The standard should remain usable when the original planner is no longer present to explain it.
Review Current State Scenario, Territory Health, Territory Equity, Roster Logic alongside Scenario. Preserve their distinct definitions and show the dependency between them so a correction to evidence does not quietly become a policy exception or assignment preference.
Scenario failure modes and controls
The primary Scenario failure is letting a preferred assignment determine the rule after stakeholders have already seen the result. Prevent it by publishing the definition and decision sequence before individual assignments are reviewed, then evaluate proposed changes across the full affected population.
Another failure is allowing Scenario to end at a handoff with no accountable next owner or effective-state check. Define completion evidence, escalation timing, and the condition that restarts the workflow when an input changes.
Review Scenario after each material cycle and when a trigger, role, handoff, approval, or system dependency changes. Track delayed cases, incomplete outputs, expired temporary states, and repeated escalations to find where the workflow is failing.
In practice with BoogieBoard
For Scenario, the relevant BoogieBoard workflow is scenario-level Balance review backed by the account roster. BoogieBoard's Balance workflow displays multiple territory measures in the same Scenario Result, so reviewers can compare the complete tradeoff instead of relying on one combined score. A planner can preserve the Current State Scenario, change a goal or constraint, inspect the territory-level result, and then open the account roster behind an unexpected value. Approved locks remain visible while the movable population changes. This makes the concept reviewable before activation and gives managers evidence for why one scenario was selected over another.
