About 5 years ago, when I first started using this method, I gave a talk about it that went into detail about how to do it, and the benefits. I did a live demo showing how well it modeled the variance even for really simple tasks like "take off your shoes and then put them back on".

The audience reaction was very positive, and I was pleased to have spread the word.

No one actually put it into action, though. It turns out if you need better estimation tools, you don't have time to make them -- you're in crunch time, because your estimates were bad.

The benefit is not so much slick UI -- that part is just me having fun. The benefit is that the work, however easy, is done.

If folks "steal" this idea because it's easy to implement, that's great! It's not a new idea, just an underused one. I just want to stop being hired onto contracts where the first thing I have to do is explain that the deadline is impossible.

I agree with you that a linear backlog is not sufficient to do really sophisticated planning -- Vistimo Quotes is a pared-down tool designed for easy adoption, because my kitchen-sink version requires too much buy-in for many teams.