Topic guide

Forecasting and Decision-Making

Forecasts are ranges with assumptions attached. Most of the damage happens when they get reported as dates.

A forecast is a structured expression of uncertainty. Almost every failure in this area comes from stripping the uncertainty out — converting a probability into a promise, a range into a date, and a set of assumptions into a commitment nobody can trace back.

These articles cover the arithmetic and the psychology together: why ten sensible assumptions multiply into an unlikely plan, why more data cannot make an adaptive system predictable, and why "data-driven" is not the same as evidence-based when the data still requires interpretation.

Articles in this guide

  1. Probabilistic Forecasting for Product Management

    Why a fixed deadline hides uncertainty, and how probabilistic forecasts support better product decisions.

  2. Peep Show , football and probability as narrated by Mark Corrigan

    Mark Corrigan explains why a ten-leg football accumulator and a ten-assumption business plan fail for exactly the same mathematical reason.

    Interactive simulation: Compound Probability — Why Programme Plans Fail Like Accumulators →

  3. Chris Kamara, AI, and Why Football Refuses to Be Predicted

    Why more data cannot make an open system predictable, and what goes wrong when a 57% probability gets reported as a promise.

    Interactive simulation: Open Systems and the Limits of Prediction — An Interactive Model →

  4. The myth of Data-Driven Product Management

    E.H. Carr and the Myth of Data-Driven Product Management.

  5. What Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Can Teach Us About Objectives

    Two failure modes that stakeholder management usually treats as one: people who do not share your objective, and people who share it but are quietly optimising for something else.

    Interactive simulation: Stakeholder Objectives — Misalignment, Side Quests and Invalid Goals →

Where this gets applied

Work Simulator is a Monte Carlo platform built precisely to produce confidence ranges instead of single dates.

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