As you become more proficient at building spreadsheet models, you will want to know how much a given assumption affects the result. In other words, you want to determine the sensitivity of the forecast to each assumption. The overall sensitivity of a forecast to an assumption is a combination of two factors:
To determine the model sensitivity, you would need to algebraically analyze the various relationships between the forecast cell and the assumption cells. Calculating these complex relationships could be a difficult and time-consuming task without a program like Crystal Ball.
The following sections describe how to create and use sensitivity charts: