[!todo] Seed note. A starting point, not a finished note yet.
A cycle time scatterplot places one dot per finished work item, with completion date on the x-axis and cycle time on the y-axis. Percentile lines drawn across it (50th, 85th, 95th) turn the cloud of dots into a probabilistic statement: “85% of our items finish within N days.” It matters because it recovers exactly what Little’s Law throws away. The law relates long-run averages and says nothing about the spread, so it cannot forecast an individual item, whereas the scatterplot shows the whole distribution and lets you quote a confidence level for the next piece of work. It is the empirical input that feeds Monte Carlo delivery forecasts. Seeded from Little’s Law.