Here's one thing that I've learned. It can be best (for me at least) to do one panel at a time. Meaning, compound, then polish that area and then move on to the next panel. Reason being, if at a certain point something goes wrong only that panel will be affected and you only have to trouble shoot that area, instead of having to go back and figure out what went wrong and where.
For example, if you are compounding the entire car and then going back and polishing the entire car. At any point you could have picked up a piece of dirt and created pig tails. If you did the entire car, then you have to figure out where the pig tails started occurring and have to go back hunting for them, which can use up a lot of time.
If compounding and polishing that panel at least you are sure the panels previously done are good. That's just a way I prefer to do it now.
I usually have 2 machines connected primed and ready to be used. For example, one primed with compound and a microfiber cutting pad and the other machine with polish and a polishing pad. I then just go from panel to panel switching between each machine on the fly.