[eternalban]

The approach OP described was new for me. What I got from the article was that a statistical tool allows for fairly accurate estimates without the need to "[spend] hours talking with various people for input". Further, it is not a certainty that an elaborate exploration of the proposed changes with various stakeholders will address potential blindspots or simply unexpected events (e.g. some infra burning). If OP is corrent, the statistical estimate has all these factors baked into it and will only get better over time.

This is the value of the approach, imo. Takes the 'subjective' element out of the picture. [p.s. And also, it 'scales' with project size, likely O(1). The 'ask everyone involved' approach is at best O(N)'.]

Your point regarding the standard deviation is quite fair but doesn't indicate a failure of the approach: the approach would be broken if they ever exceed the sd, so it is still a nice, definite, limit to the task completion timeline. Also I assume that as more data is gathered, the sd will shrink.