Description
Lean Coffee is an agile technique that allows for successful, collaborative meetings with minimal planning or agenda setting. Personal Kanban boards, sticky notes, sharpies, and innovative voting techniques such as dot voting, fist-to-five, or even dart-guns with targets are often used to aid in the collaboration and decision-making process.
Typical Roles
Team Member
Scrum Master
Other Stakeholders as needed
Desired Behaviors
- 1.
Agree on a basic theme for the session.
- 2.
Attendees write topics to be discussed on sticky notes or cards.
- 3.
Establish a personal or temporary Kanban board with “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done” columns.
- 4.
Introduce each topic.
- 5.
Vote, and rank, each topic for discussion.
- 6.
Prioritize the ideas by vote, and move the first to the “Doing” column.
- 7.
Set a time for five minutes, and timebox the discussion of each idea.
- 8.
If the timer goes off, the group can vote for an extension for another five minutes.
- 9.
When time runs out, and no one wishes to continue, move the idea to the “Done” column.
- 10.
Record outcomes and decisions, and distribute to the relevant stakeholders.