Planning tools and techniques (Was "Juggle Act")

[Chris Hamilton <chamilton -at- GR -dot- COM>]

It seems to me that one way we can assure ourselves some time to do
things like walk on the beach is to have a decent idea up front what is
required and how long that would take. (Duh.) Obviously, that's not
possible in all cases, but just winging every time it is a good way to
spend lots of money on Maalox.

So what do you do to keep from from totally winging it? I realize this
is a rather open-ended question and that there are some obvious answers
(get it included in the contract, talk to the project manager and
project members, look at similar products from the same group). But what
do you do when you don't have the benefit of that stuff and even the
project management can give you nothing more than a swag? Even page per
hour metrics are useless when you don't have a clue what the expected
page count is?

Specifically, we're into a new type of products and many of the rules of
our previous products just don't apply to these products. So there's a
lot of guess work and I'm looking to the collective wisdom of the list
to find ways to do more planning and less reacting. Is that even
possible? (Sorry for the vagueness of the question, but my mind is vague
on this.)
--
Chris Hamilton, Technical Writer
Greenbrier & Russel
847.330.4146
chamilton -at- gr -dot- com

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