[strife25]

I used this method for a while on one of my teams. It was useful and helped provide more accurate estimates.

Some tips I have for people interested:

* Get about two months of velocity data in place first. * Run the simulation on a regular basis. Update your estimates every week/sprint. * It helps to have individual work units be "sized" as consistent as you can. (E.g. each ticket is 2-3 days, a consistent pointing system, etc.) It's ok if anomalies happen from time to time. * Dates will get more accurate the further you get into a project.

Some things I've learned from doing this exercise:

* When work units are sized to be 2-3 days of effort, engineers complete about 4 units/wk on average. * Don't shoot for the perfect estimate at the start of a project. Plan as much scope as you know and enough to get started. * As new scope is found, update your project plan and estimates.

[markmaglana]

If you already have ~2 months worth of data, why not just use that to plot a distribution curve? Seems to me that the monte carlo simulation that the article describes is really just used to "guess" the likely distribution curve. Seems unnecessary if you already have ~2 months worth of data.