Lean Coffee Exercise

Outcomes

This exercise is based upon the Lean Coffee movement and provides a technique that can be used for all sorts of discussions including Sprint Retrospectives, informal gatherings and even large town hall meetings.

Equipment

• Post-it notes
• Marker pens
• Countdown timer
• Beverage of choice for each person

Timings

• Allow up to 60 mins for this exercise.

Tasks

1. Begin with stating the theme or intention behind the coffee conversation
2. Next brainstorm ideas and topics for discussion that relate to the theme for a couple of minutes and write them on the post-it notes, with one idea per post-it note
3. When everyone has finished putting their ideas down, invite everyone around the table to give a brief description of their topic with just enough information and context so that the other members can vote on them
4. When all of the topics have been briefly described, then dot vote with each member of the group casting 3 votes (dots) on the topics that they would like to talk about most
5. After the dot voting, arrange the post-it notes in order of highest votes first and use some additional post-it notes to create a “personal Kanban” with columns for “To Do”, “Doing”, “Done” and “Actions” in the centre of the table
6. Pick up the first topic and place it in the “Doing” column and start a timer for 5 minutes, and start to discuss the topic as a group and record any actions that arise from the conversation on another post-it note, and place it in the “Actions” column
7. If the timer finishes, then ask the group if they would like to carry on with this topic or move on to the next topic
8. If the group opted to move on to the next topic, then place the previous topic post-it note in the “Done”
9. Repeat steps 6-8 until either all of the topics have been discussed or the maximum time has elapsed