Everything expensive is decided before the first plank
A slab reads flat to the eye and fails to a straightedge. The dips are shallow and wide, which is exactly why they hide: you do not see a low spot until a rigid plank bridges it and the joint above starts to move under a footstep.
So the base is worked before anything else is allowed to start, across the whole area rather than only at the worst points. Patching only the holes leaves a floor that is flat in patches, and the transitions between them come back later as soft spots.
The first row governs the room
Direction is set from the longest uninterrupted sightline, which in a house is almost always the hall, and from where the light comes in: a run laid across the light shows every joint, a run laid with it does not. Everything that opens off that line inherits it.
From there the work moves outward, with the perimeter of each room done last. Edges are where the cuts live, and a cut is only as good as the line it was measured from.