Scenarios

What is a Scenario?

A scenario in Lineo-PM is a persistent alternative timeline for your project. It is a full copy of your project’s schedule that you can modify independently — adding tasks, moving activities, changing dependencies — without affecting your baseline plan.

Think of scenarios as branches in a version control system: the baseline is your main branch, and each scenario is an experimental branch where you can safely model a different future.

Why Use Scenarios?

Real projects rarely follow a single plan. Stakeholders ask “what if we cut scope?”, “what if the backend slips?”, “what if we ship in two phases?” — all before committing to anything.

Scenarios let you answer these questions concretely. Instead of reasoning in the abstract, you can model each alternative as a full schedule, compare the projected outcomes, and then make an informed decision about which path to take.

How Scenarios Work

Creating a Scenario

From any project view, open the Scenarios panel and click New Scenario. Give it a descriptive name that captures the hypothesis being modeled (e.g., “Phase 2 Deferred”, “Reduced Sprint Capacity”).

Lineo creates a snapshot of the current baseline schedule and associates it with the new scenario. You can now edit this scenario independently.

Editing Within a Scenario

When a scenario is active, all changes you make — dragging tasks, adjusting dates, modifying dependencies — apply only to that scenario. Your baseline plan remains untouched.

Within a scenario you can:

• Move tasks to different dates
• Add or remove dependencies
• Adjust task durations and risk levels
• Add narrative updates explaining your assumptions

Comparing Scenarios

You can view any scenario side by side with your baseline. The comparison shows:

• Timeline differences: which tasks moved and by how much
• New projected project end date
• Risk delta: how simulation results differ between the baseline and the scenario

This gives you an apples-to-apples comparison to support a concrete decision.

Promoting a Scenario to Baseline

When you have decided that a scenario represents the path you are committing to, you can promote it to baseline. This replaces the current baseline with the scenario’s schedule, and the scenario is retired.

All other scenarios remain intact and are automatically rebased against the new baseline.

Scenarios and Monte Carlo

Every scenario can be submitted for an independent Monte Carlo simulation. This means you can compare not just the nominal timelines but the probabilistic risk profiles of each alternative — giving you a statistically grounded basis for choosing between plans.