Six Pillars Futures Thinking Methods Map

Map pillar:activity labels to exactly six caller-supplied pillars and report missing pillars and unknown mappings.

Description

Six-pillar mapping checks that activities have been assigned to each of six supplied pillars.

Six-pillar mapping checks that activities have been assigned to each of six supplied pillars. The caller provides the pillar vocabulary.^[1]

The returned values include All pillars covered, Mapped activities, Missing pillars, Unmapped activities. The How section below explains the calculation, input rules and interpretation.

When to use Six Pillars Futures Thinking Methods Map

Use Six Pillars Futures Thinking Methods Map when you need to evaluate the supplied records under the calculation and evidence rules below. No canonical six labels or quality of activities is established.

Define the question, evidence and scenario assumptions first. Supply the chosen score scales, time horizons or reference selection explicitly. Interpret generated text as a discussion template and screen labels as the stated rules.

How to use Six Pillars Futures Thinking Methods Map and understand its results

Define the question, evidence and scenario assumptions first. Supply the chosen score scales, time horizons or reference selection explicitly. Interpret generated text as a discussion template and screen labels as the stated rules.
Enter activityMappings, pillars using the field table and calculation rules, then run the tool.
Read completeCoverage, mappedActivities, missingPillars, unmappedMappings. The explanation below defines the units, signs, ordering and any flags or placeholder values.
If the tool reports an input issue, correct the values and run it again. Apply the stated assumptions when interpreting a successfully returned result.

Input field	Meaning	Value type; see rules below	Requirement
activityMappings	Mappings in pillar:activity form.	list of string	Required
pillars	Exactly six unique pillar labels.	list of string	Required

Require exactly six distinct trimmed lowercase nonblank pillar labels. Activity mappings may be empty but each must contain a colon. Split at the first colon; trim the remaining activity and lowercase pillar. Unknown pillars or blank activities are returned as unmapped, not rejected. Return missing pillars, valid mapping count and complete flag.

coverage=distinct matched pillars/6

Units, indexing, boundary conditions and exceptional cases are defined in the calculation rules above.

Output field	Meaning	Value type
completeCoverage	All pillars covered	boolean
mappedActivities	Mapped activities	integer; minimum: 0
missingPillars	Missing pillars	list of string
unmappedMappings	Unmapped activities	list of string

json

{
  "input": {
    "activityMappings": [
      "Challenge:assumptions",
      "Vision:scenarios",
      "Unknown:unmapped",
      "Act:actions"
    ],
    "pillars": [
      "Challenge",
      "Vision",
      "Act",
      "Analyze",
      "Imagine",
      "Sense"
    ]
  },
  "output": {
    "completeCoverage": false,
    "mappedActivities": 3,
    "missingPillars": [
      "analyze",
      "imagine",
      "sense"
    ],
    "unmappedMappings": [
      "Unknown:unmapped"
    ]
  }
}

Limitations and assumptions

No canonical six labels or quality of activities is established.

Numeric inputs, where present, must be finite. Follow the calculation-specific rules for overflow, underflow and exceptional cases. Core numeric and string lists are limited to 100,000 entries; text entries are subject to the general large-text limit. Follow any smaller calculation limits above. Missing fields without a declared default, extra fields, wrong value types and violations of the calculation rules are input errors. A successfully returned false flag is an evaluated outcome; its meaning is explained above.

Alternative or Complementary methods

Use STEEPLED Category Scanning Checklist: STEEPLED expands horizon scanning across social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, ethical and demographic categories. Coverage supports breadth rather than truth of findings. For a complementary task, use Futures Literacy Capability Checklist: Futures literacy spans several capabilities rather than a single forecast skill. A declared rating scale makes this checklist transparent.

References

Six Pillars Futures Thinking Methods Map — tool.io

Similar or alternative tools

STEEPLED Category Scanning Checklist
STEEPLED expands horizon scanning across social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, ethical and demographic categories. Coverage supports breadth rather than truth of findings.
Futures Literacy Capability Checklist
Futures literacy spans several capabilities rather than a single forecast skill. A declared rating scale makes this checklist transparent.