One thing that works for parallelization in these unsecure situations are things that you know you'll surely need. This even might just involve testing things.

One thing that works for parallelization in these unsecure situations are things that you know you'll surely need. This even might just involve testing things. E.g. on member developes a comparison method for testing, another member goes for one approach, another for the other and a third for yet another. And after a set period you try to evaluate everything. Of course this approach only makes sense when there isn't already a favoured or clearly superior approach. Similarily during actual development modularization can be a way to parallelize development. So one component per person or per team. For my own stuff I also like to interleave the human-facing parts of my products with the technological guts, especially if I am still figuring things out — developing the technology without knowing how it is being used will force the way you can use it into a certain direction — designing the interface without knowing the technology has it's own traps as well.