Support / Updating & baselines
What-If Scenarios
A what-if scenario is a copy of your schedule you can change freely. Use it to test resequencing, adding a second crew, a recovery plan, or leveling before you touch the live schedule.
Create a scenario
Analysis ▾ → What-if scenario. A new project named "(project) — what-if" opens. A banner reminds you that changes here don't touch the live schedule.
Edit it like any schedule: change durations and logic, add activities, or run resource leveling.
Compare to the live schedule
Click Compare to parent in the banner or the Analysis menu. The comparison shows:
- Summary figures: finish slip, and activities changed, slipped, critical slipped, added, and removed
- A table of changed fields: Activity, Field, Parent, Scenario
- Lists of activities added, removed, and logic changes
Activities are matched by WBS code, then by name, so keep those stable while you experiment.
Promote or discard
- Promote to parent writes the scenario's values onto the live schedule after confirming. The parent's values are overwritten.
- To discard, just stop using it. On the home page, filter projects by Status: scenario to find and archive old scenarios.
Ideas
- Test a recovery plan before you present it to the owner.
- Check what happens if a long-lead delivery slips 3 weeks.
- Price out acceleration by comparing finishes with and without overtime calendars.