When you find the answer, please post it here.

I'm dealing with a variant of this problem now. My company is offering a new "software as a service" initiative, but we don't even know the complete list of steps that it takes to stand up a new customer. Nevermind the basic management questions about how long it takes (OpEx), how much computational power (CapEx) is required, how much data is involved (CapEx), or how long a standard transaction takes, and where the threshold for a non-standard transaction begins. As you might imagine, the entire initiative is a smoking crater in the ground, and has already cost at least 2 people a rung on their career ladder.

The recent final Shuttle launch made me cry, as much because NASA - for all it's faults and cost overruns - understands Process. I flippin' hate Process. But I don't know of any better approach.

1. Write out the sequence of Things That Must Be Done.
2. Guess how long each item will take.
2a. Triple your guess
3. Create the schedule.
4. Set client expectations honestly based on 3. Resist the impulse to sugar-coat this.
5. Do Things.
6. Make note of how long Step 5 really took.
6a. add additional fudge factor
7. Adjust subsequent estimations of Step 2 based on Step 6.
8. Repeat.

Simple to advise on the Internet; fiendishly difficult to do in practice. Goodness knows I usually get hung up somwhere around step 2.5

(More seriously: Try the Getting Things Done methodology. It's not the epiphany they make it out to be, but useful nonetheless.)

yeah procrastination is a personal monster of mine so the GTD thing is something I've considered. Actually something I found more useful is the Stephen Covey stuff, 7 habits etc and that's where I guess I picked up this distinction between urgent things and important things and that's really the scale I feel gets tipped here, the pissant urgent projects get the attention over the Big Important Project right up until BIP people send us an email saying, "hey, how are things?" At which point my sleeping-hours just plummet. I can deal with pressure well (hey, things need to get done so they need to get done) but I think physically this crises-mode behavior is gonna take its toll, like ya know, I'm not 17 anymore, sleep is important.

In a way the middle people are doing their job, relaying communication from the client. I don't want them to manage me even if they had the inclination so I guess in that vacuum I just have to manage the projects myself; I'm doing X, Y, Z today not just the stuff on X that you emailed about .. because I know, tomorrow, Y & Z are gonna be knocking on our door

I started reading the GTD book. I keep meaning to pick it up and finish...