After MAIA maps the dependencies in your decision, you'll choose a timeline — how far into the future the analysis should look. This shapes every downstream stage: disruption scenarios, cascade chains, countermeasures, and the readiness assessment are all calibrated to your chosen horizon.
The Timeline Options
You'll see a set of clickable options:
- 3 Months — Short-horizon decisions: tactical moves, immediate responses, quarterly initiatives
- 6 Months — Medium-horizon: product launches, hiring plans, contract negotiations
- 1 Year — Standard strategic horizon: market entries, technology migrations, organizational restructuring
- 18 Months — Extended horizon: M&A integration, multi-phase transformations, regulatory compliance programs
- Custom — Enter any timeframe in natural language (e.g., "9 months" or "2 years"). Use this when your decision has a specific deadline or milestone that doesn't match the preset options.
MAIA's Suggestion
Based on its analysis of your decision context, MAIA may suggest a specific timeline — marked with a ★ star badge. This suggestion is based on temporal dependencies detected in your decision: regulatory deadlines, contract expirations, competitive windows, seasonal factors.
The suggestion is informational. Your choice overrides the suggestion. If MAIA suggests 12 months but you know your board decision is in 6 months, choose 6 months. You know your situation better than the analysis does.
How Timeline Affects the Analysis
The timeline isn't just a label — it changes the analysis:
- Disruption scenarios are filtered for plausibility within your chosen horizon. A 3-month rehearsal won't include disruptions that take years to materialize.
- Cascade chains are modeled against the timeline, showing which effects hit within your window and which develop beyond it.
- Countermeasures are assessed for feasibility within your timeframe. A stabilizer that takes 18 months to implement scores differently in a 6-month rehearsal than in a 2-year one.
- Irreversibility points are mapped — moments within your timeline where the decision becomes difficult or impossible to reverse.
Choose the timeline that matches when the decision needs to hold — not when you want to make it, but how far forward you need the consequences to be stable.