[eszed]

Good call. When you've got no idea where to start, that's how to start.

Mostly, though, I think people "flail" because they don't know the pipeline well enough to even do that. I know I've been in that position before, when approaching completely new (to me) systems. (Sometimes there isn't someone more knowledgeable you can ask!) That's where I find hypothesis -> test -> refine particularly useful. You're still wrong far, far more often than you're right, but it stops feeling like flailing, and more like making progress towards understanding the system well enough to apply other techniques (whatever they might be) more smartly.