Lean Coffee is an structured but agenda less meeting that allows participants to gather, build and talk. It’s a great way to run Retrospectives by crowd-sourcing what the team really want to talk about.
Our implementation of Lean Coffee with this client was a way to informally discuss what was important to the team and look at ways to improve our efficiency, effectiveness and processes within the service delivery team.
How does it work?
- We spend 2 mins writing down topics people want to discuss
- We spend 2 – 5 mins minutes letting people explain their topics (15-30 secs each)
- We vote on which topics to discuss in what order. Each person gets 3 votes
- We start talking. We let the conversation run for 5 minutes per topic, at the 5 minute mark we take a show of thumbs (up, down, neutral) to see if we want to stay on this topic or move on
It’s really that simple. The power is that we have a list of topics everyone at the table is interested in and is motivated to discuss.
Benefits of Lean Coffee:
- Talk about what is important to my team
- Team decides how long we discuss each topic
- Sharing experiences and challenges
- We are solving problems together
- Collaboration and team building
- No preparation required
- Free coffee on the boss!
