The Lean Coffee is a meeting where the participants build the agenda in real time by proposing topics for discussion.
Each item is discussed in priority order for a fixed time before deciding if more time is needed, an action can be created or resolved.
This kanban style meeting approach allows the team to stay engaged throughout the whole meeting while keeping the conversation dynamic and flowing.
Lean Coffee has basic columns:
- To Discuss: What topics should we discuss?
- In Progress: The current topic being discussed.
- Discussed: These topics have been discussed.
Some of the reasons for running a lean coffee in GroupMap are:
- It offers structured discussions with flexibility for participant-driven topics.
- You can choose the level of anonymity depending on how comfortable the team feels.
- You can easily facilitate discussions one at a time with an in-built timer.
- People can comment on each idea in real time to further encourage engagement and discussion.
- It helps foster team work, collaboration and communication as well as a problem solving mindset.
Lean Coffee formats are a great way to help teams reflect, prioritize challenges, and celebrate successes. The outcomes are a shared understanding of what’s next, clear action items, and a stronger sense of ownership across the team.
- Make your Lean Coffee anonymous to encourage ideas from the quieter or introverted members.
- Avoid deep dives. Set a 3 to 5 minute limit for the first pass for each topic. Call for a hands up if more time is needed.
- Lean Coffee is agenda-less by design, so encourage both technical and interpersonal issues.
- If there are too many topics for the limited time, use dot voting to prioritize the discussion.
- If a topic can’t be resolved, or an action created, tag or colour code it as a Parked item for future discussion to allow the meeting to flow.
A Lean Coffee retrospective is perfect for teams that value structured yet flexible discussions. It’s especially useful for teams looking to explore a wide range of ideas or tackle pressing challenges in an open, democratic environment.
Teams that thrive on collaboration and prefer discussions over rigid processes will benefit most from a Lean Coffee template.
For cross-functional groups, agile teams, or any setting where diverse perspectives need to be heard, the Lean Coffee lets everyone contribute to ensure their voices are heard and issues that are on their mind can be raised.
There is very little preparation needed to run a Lean Coffee. That’s part of the charm. Simply choose the Lean coffee template in GroupMap to get started. Then follow the steps below.
Share the theme
Share the focus of the session, such as Process Improvement or Team Challenges.
Brainstorm
Encourage participants to add their topics in the “To Discuss” column. Use anonymity options to help everyone contribute openly.
Prioritize
Allocate votes to allow everyone to vote on their top priorities.
Discuss
Set the timer and discuss each topic in priority order.
Decide
At the end of each discussion round, decide if more time is needed, an action can be created, or the topic can be moved to Done.
There is a fine line between determining a theme and allowing everyone to add a topic of their choice. The goal here is to provide some guidance to the topics being raised, without it being too leading or restrictive.
Depending on the reason for running the Lean Coffee, and how familiar participants are with the process, the theme can be left completely open and diverse.
Otherwise, some common themes you can use to open up the conversation include:
- Team dynamics and collaboration
- Process improvements
- Project updates and challenges
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Retrospectives and reflection
- Customer feedback and insights
- Innovation and new ideas
- Resource and tools
- Personal development and team well-being
Choose the level of anonymity for the session.
If your team has a high level of psychological safety, then having names against ideas is a good idea as it will allow you to more quickly direct the conversation. For first time events and newer teams, partial or full anonymity might be a better option.
Ask each person to add one topic per card to the To Discuss column. Encourage them to make their topic clear and concise. Let them know that any topic, no matter how small they think it is, can be added.
Depending on the number of topics and time you have for your Lean Coffee, allocate the number of votes that people can allocate.
Have people read through the ideas and vote on their top X ideas that they feel would be valuable for the group to discuss in greater detail.
Set the timer for a fixed period time per discussion round.
Normally, this would be 3 to 5 minutes. GroupMap has an inbuilt timer you can set, and reset for each round.
Capture any notes in the comments or ask people to add their comments to the idea as they go.
At the end of each discussion round, ask the group if they would like more time, propose action items or feel like the topic has been resolved and can be moved to done.
You can simply use the hands up approach for each choice and then decide on next steps.
If the team decides they need more discussion time, restart the timer and go again. If they feel like the topic is resolved move it to the done column.
If the group wants to propose action item, click on the Action stage and allow people to either type, or state their proposed action items. Once action items have been discussed and accepted, then you can assign dates, priority and ownership.
Continue with each topic in order until time runs out, or you have discussed all voted topics.
Congratulations you have just completed a Lean Coffee.
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