Plan together as a whole team, junior and senior team members, leads and employees, implementation, design, and testing. 

• CAUTION: It’s important for the growth and education of junior team members for them to hear, learn, and discuss how to plan for upcoming work.

Talk about the entire effort to be done, from beginning to end, as an entire team. 

• CAUTION: It’s important that different team members understand the work of their teammates; there are often insights to be gleaned between tasks.

Check again for any remaining questions, and answer them during planning; if they cannot be answered, put the job aside until you can get the answers.

• WARNING: Assumptions are the largest cause of rework; teams often waste more time during rework than during waiting for an answer; teams engaged in rework appear busier, but actually have lower output.

If you estimate, every team member needs to think about and estimate the entire job to be done.

• WARNING: Do NOT estimate role-by-role and use the sum total.

• TIP: If a team member doesn’t understand someone else’s job, have them guess; comparing guesses against reality promotes cross-learning and cross-awareness within a cross-functional team.

Encourage volunteering for work assignments to promote ownership and responsibility.