What is a Lean Coffee?
Essentially, a Lean Coffee is a group of people working together to learn about lean in an informal setting. It's like a mini-unconference where the participants decide on the schedule. The timeframe is typically one to two hours. The number of people is best between 6-8 but 4-10 works fine.
Here's how it works.
One person facilitates these actions.
Step 1: Everybody writes down topics they'd like to discuss on stickies placing them in a column in the center of the table. Give as much time as needed, but typically takes only 3-5 minutes.
Step 2: Each topic is briefly described by its writer (15-30 seconds typically per stickie).
Step 3: Each person gets three votes which they indicate by marking the voted for stickie with a dot (they can put as many votes as they like on one stickie).
Step 4: The top three stickies are placed in a new column, ordered by the stickies with the most votes at the top
Step 5: Each of these stickies are discussed for 5-15 minutes. When the facilitator thinks the discussion has reached a good end-point she asks if everyone is complete. When complete move the stickie over into a new column that represents 'done'. Repeat step until all done.
Step 6: If enough time is left over, do another stickie or two.
Celebrate being done.
Join or login to comment.