A KNOWLEDGE-BASED APPROACH TO STRATEGIC-PLANNING

The Strategic Planning System (SPS) is a knowledge-based causal modeling and analysis technology. It has been designed to provide an organizing framework within which planners can (1) identify the key goals, actions and environmental variables which potentially contribute to the success or failure of a particular plan of action, (2) express the underlying causal relationships between these critical business factors, (3) obtain automatic identification of all feedback loops in a given model, including the determination of the positive or negative polarity of each loop, (4) obtain structural information on how these positive and negative loops interact to produce what are often counterintuitive effects from strategic system inputs, (5) determine the effects and side-effects of a given action plan or strategy, and (6) through ad-hoc queries, conduct ''what-if'' analyses and obtain various sorts of advice on manipulating action and goal variables. In group planning situations, SPS provides a model building methodology and an automated environment within which specific scenarios can be defined, and strategic plans can be iteratively refined based on group feedback and consensus.