What Is Lean Coffee?

• Lean Coffee started in Seattle in 2009 by Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith
• A structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking.
• Intentionally minimalist - to be the least structure necessary for a coherent and productive meeting

Why Do Lean Coffee?

• Surfaces topics that the participants want to discuss
• Helps create more value out the of conversation since it's participant-run
• For meetings with a specific focus, add scope to the discussion topics

How to do Lean Coffee?

Materials Needed

• Writing utensils for all participants (markers are easier to read from a distance)
• Sticky notes (any medium size: 3x3, 4x6, etc)
• Time keeping device
• Wall surface or table

How to use it

• Set up a Personal Kanban with three columns:

  • To Discuss
  • Discussing
  • Discussed

• What to discuss

  • Ask each person to write down topics they would like to talk about on separate sticky notes. Time-box to a few minutes, ideally 3-5.
  • Lay out the topics and group duplicates or similar discussion points

• Vote & talk

  • Use Dot Voting to prioritize the topics
  • Start the timer and move the highest priority topic to the "Discussing" column. Have a volunteer start the conversation.
  • At the end of a set time-box, ask the group if they want to keep talking about that topic or move on to the next by asking for a visual indicator, where:
    • Thumbs up = "keep talking about this topic"
    • Thumbs sideways = "no strong opinion either way"
    • Thumbs down = "end discussion and switch to next topic"
  • Keep updating the Kanban board. Continue this until you are out of time or out of topics.

Look at Lean Coffee

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