KnownShift Decisions
Individual accessProject Confidence Simulator
Your plan gives you a date. This tells you how likely it is.
Describe the remaining work as ranges instead of single numbers, add the risks you already know about, and see the modelled probability of hitting the date you have committed to, the date that would carry real confidence, and what is driving the difference.
The simulation and the report are produced in your browser. Access belongs to your KnownShift account, so it follows you between devices.
Illustrative result
- 17%
- Confidence in the committed date
- 14 Nov
- P80 completion
- 23 days
- Target to P80 gap
- 38%
- Confidence in the budget
Example figures, shown to illustrate the output. Your simulation is calculated from your own project.
Individual access, bought once. Simulate as many projects and scenarios as you need, with the report on every one.
A single date hides everything that matters
A plan built from most-likely estimates usually lands on a date that is far less likely than it looks, because delays accumulate along a dependency network while early finishes do not. This simulator puts the uncertainty back and tells you what the date is actually worth.
- 1
Describe the remaining phases
Three to fifteen workstreams, each with an optimistic, most likely and pessimistic duration, and what it waits for.
- 2
Add the risks you already know about
A probability and a delay range each. Optionally a cost impact, and optionally your budget.
- 3
See how likely your date really is
Ten thousand simulations of the whole network, with the confidence, the planning levels and what is driving the spread.
What you get
A defensible confidence position, not a prettier date
Everything a commitment conversation needs, in the order it is challenged.
- Confidence in your committed date
- A modelled probability, from the plan you entered rather than from a rule of thumb.
- P50, P80 and P90 completion dates
- What each planning level costs you in time, so the trade is explicit.
- Contingency gap
- The working days between your current target and a higher-confidence commitment.
- Uncertainty drivers
- Which workstreams and risks genuinely moved the outcome, ranked by rank correlation.
- Budget confidence
- The same picture for cost, sampled in the same simulations, when you want it.
- Scenario re-simulation
- Change an estimate or remove a risk and see the movement against what you had.
- Executive interpretation
- The result written as a paragraph you can put in front of a steering committee.
- Project Confidence Report
- A concise document carrying the figures, the assumptions and the seed that produced them.
Methodology
Monte Carlo simulation, run on your own numbers
Each phase becomes a distribution rather than a number, the dependency network is resolved on every run, and the confidence figure is counted from the simulated outcomes themselves. The assumptions are shown beside every result and you can change any of them.
Structured simulation, not generative AI. The same inputs and the same seed always produce the same answer, and every saved simulation reproduces exactly.
View methodology for the full framework, the assumptions and what the model does not claim.
- Three-point estimates
- Each phase becomes a Beta-PERT distribution rather than a single number.
- The dependency network
- Finish-to-start relationships resolved on every simulation, so parallel paths compete properly.
- Known risks
- Tested independently on each run, landing on the project or on one workstream.
- Ten thousand simulations
- The point where the dates this product reports stop moving between runs.
- Percentiles
- Read from the simulated outcomes by interpolation, never from a formula over the inputs.
- Driver ranking
- Spearman rank correlation between each input and the total duration.
- Cost sampling
- Drawn in the same iterations, so a risk that delays also charges.
- A fixed seed
- Recorded with every saved simulation, so a result reproduces exactly months later.
Questions
What people ask before buying this
Short, practical answers about what the simulator needs from you and what it gives back.
Before you buy
Using the simulator
Confidence tells you where you stand. The next change moves it.
The Simulator quantifies the plan you have now. The Change Impact Analyzer answers the question that arrives next: what a requested change does to that effort, that date and that margin before anybody approves it.
Evaluating this for a team? Discuss team or enterprise use with the KnownShift team.