Lean Coffee - simple solution for engaging meetings

What it is all about?

Lean Coffee is pretty new format of running meetings. It has been started first in 2009 in Seattle. As per Lean Coffee official website “Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated.” It is very good format to quickly organize conversation on topics that are most relevant for people, who showed up on the session. It's name suggest it combines Lean approaches (including Lean Thinking as well as Lean in terms of eliminating waste) with the idea of meeting in informal place. One of the functions of "lean" part is eliminating waste of resources, peoples' skills and time. This format was developed to use available time in most efficient manner.

Why I should even get interested?

If you are still looking for reasons why to give it a try let me give you several interesting points:

Topics of interest - because agenda is created by participants they will talk about things they really care about, meeting will be focused on topics which are valuable and important to the group
Many topics quickly - because of this format you are able to cover multiple topics in limited time frame
Open discussion - Lean Coffee provides opportunity to discuss topics that matters to the group, learn from each other and move ideas forward
Many knowledge and experience levels - it creates a way to discuss opinions coming from people with different knowledge, experience levels and viewpoints.
Easy to learn and facilitate - format is relatively easy to learn and facilitate so you don't need special preparations or experienced facilitator to start with.

What are the best use cases?

The most common use of Lean Coffee you can come across is in Agile environments or to discuss Agile topics. So it works very well in different kind of Agile meetups, community meetings etc. However this method can be applied in other settings too. It can be used as medium for retrospectives, brainstorming sessions with the team, meet and greet for potential new collaborators and to crowd-source ideas for future talks. You can use it to connect people across organization who would not normally bump into each other. Obviously you don't have to rely only on your workplace. You can setup one in your community to network, make connections and learn from each other.

How does it work?

As I mentioned above the format is fairly simple. Steps are straightforward and can be modified depending upon a situation.

Initial settings

What do you need?

Something to write with (sharpies are better because notes can be visible from distance)
Pad of sticky notes of any size (slightly bigger than regular will be better)
Whiteboard or flipchart to attach notes to
A timing device (like smartphone)

Time

Depending on size of the group you will need 1.5 - 2 hours to do this exercise.

People

Size of the group is not key factor to success but generally smaller groups will work slightly better. Group of 7 - 10 people is just fine but larger will be ok as well.

Personal Kanban

To perform Lean Coffee session you need to setup Personal Kanban. But no worries, it's not something really special. You need to have a board with columns:

To discuss
Discussing
Discussed

to move topics through various stages. You can also add "Actions" column to capture any actions if they will come up.

Facilitating the session

The whole process can be described in three main steps:

Ideation
Voting
Discussion

Step 1: Ideation

In this step participants suggest topics to discuss (optionally: following main theme if it's agreed). Give participants 5-10 minutes to think about topics and write them down on cards. One card should contain only one topic.

When time is over or there are no new ideas ask all participants to attach their cards to Kanban in "To discuss" column. For now, order of cards does not matter much, it can be random.

Once all cards are on board go through the ideas and ask author of each note to share one or two sentences of explanation about her or his topic.

Since some topics can be very similar or even identical, you can go through some grouping exercise and ask participants to group such cards together and either place one on top of another or draw a circle around similar topics (since now they will behave like single topic).

Step 2: Voting

Use dot voting to prioritize topics, determine which topic to talk about first, second, third etc. Each participant is given 2 - 3 votes to apply as they wish to topics which are most interesting for them. Participant can spread the votes out or apply all to one topic.

2 - 4 minutes should be enough to perform voting.

When voting if finished count all votes for each card and rank them by popularity - most popular on the top of "To discuss" column.

Voila! Your agenda is ready

Step 3: Discussion

Discussion starts with top item from "To discuss" column. Move it to "Discussing" column. Set the timer to 5 - 10 minutes (whatever seems to be reasonable initial time box for discussion). Ask volunteer to start discussion on the topic. Remember to give the group warning at least a minute or half before time box expires.

When initial time box is over you need to check if there is still appetite to continue with current topic. The easiest way to do this is to conduct "Roman vote". On your mark each participants shows:

thumb up - "I'm interested in continuing on this topic"
thumb down - "Let's move to next one"
thumb sideways - "Both works for me"

If count of thumbs up + thumbs sideways votes constitutes a majority - set the timer to shorter duration (for example 3 minutes) and continue discussion. You can repeat this as many times as necessary, until the group loses interest in given topic (which means that Roman vote shows most thumbs down).

Once current items is out of interest move it to "Discussed" column. Then pick next items (in priority order) from "To discuss" column and repeat the process.

Optionally, in last 5 - 10 minutes you can collect all takeaways and actions from the group and put them in "Action" column.

At the end remember to capture results of work either by placing board in some visible place or taking a picture of it.

What about topics you did not manage to discuss?

First of all you need to realize that most probably you won't be able ti finish all the topics. And don't worry about saving them for next conversation. You don't want to save them for next time for the following reasons:

person who proposed this topic may not be there next time
person who propose the topic could get required information already, for example through the course of this conversation

Maybe some tips for online edition?

If you team is virtual or distributed one you can try with Lean Coffee as well. Ideally you should select two tools - one for online meeting and second for facilitating the board. If it comes to the later you should consider tools which supports:

splitting workspace to columns / group - our Personal Kanban
creating cards by multiple people
grouping cards together for similar topics
voting on cards
prioritizing / changing order of cards (ideally automatically based on votes)
moving cards between columns
having some adjustable timer which can be controlled by facilitator and visible to participants

If it comes to tools currently available on the web you can try:

http://agile.coffee/ - free version of Fun Retro for Lean Coffee
https://www.retrium.com/ - supports basically all our needs but it is paid
https://www.leancoffeetable.com/ - appears to suport all except grouping cards and it's paid as well
http://www.funretrospectives.com/ - appears to support all our needs - paid

For simplicity you can go for basically any sticky notes app - they will support basic stuff. However if you're running multiple session and more often it may be worth to consider paid options as they offer features like grouping, sorting, prioritizing etc. which may be of a great help for you.

May I have short, handy instruction?

If you still need some shorter version of instruction this one may be handy:

Draw a Personal Kanban - three columns: To be discussed, Discussing, Discussed
For 5 minutes each person write down proposed topics on post it notes
Each person explain her / his proposal in one - two sentences
Each person votes on favorite topics using dot vote - 3 votes to be distributed
Facilitator orders topics per popularity
The group moves through topics in time boxed manner (5 - 10 minutes of initial time box, then Roman vote to check if there is still interest in this topic) and moves corresponding cards through Kanban board.
End with collecting key actions and takeaways.

Maybe this image will also help you remembering basics:

Source: ConnectionH2H.com

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