How can I trust ForeTell simulations?
This is probably the most important question to ask. The ForeTell methodology prescribes multiple techniques for verifying ForeTell solutions and that help end-users build confidence in them over time. First, ForeTell produces an audit trail when it projects a scenario. This trail explicitly logs every change induced by the simulation engine, including events, trends, causal forces, and actor behaviors. These logs allow developers and end-users to reconstruct what happened, when, and why, to validate the individual pieces of the ForeTell solution. Beyond this “unit-level” testing, we apply system level “sanity” tests. This involves developing scenarios of extreme situations, for which our experts and end-users are likely to have strong intuitions about outcomes. For example, one would expect a retail store that does not stock what its customers expect to perform poorly. We verify that ForeTell projects behaviors in line with these expectations. We then gradually return to more typical
