Comment by citrusx

The problem with the proposed solution is that many teams can't accurately break down tasks small enough. And, even those smaller tasks have variability in how long they take to do. What I've seen is that most teams don't really know how far "stories" break down into their simplest tasks until they actually do the work.

So, that puts us back at square one, for the most part. A story point may not tell you a lot, but tasks in this form often present the same problem.