The idea I want to share today - “Lean coffee”. My college and I decided to organize it in our company. “Lean coffee” is yet another easy way how to run a discussion in organized pattern. To learn more about it you can watch a short video.
So we had our first “Lean coffee”, here are some insights after it.
It was open for everyone in our development department. We had no topics restrictions, any questions and ideas were welcome to discuss for the first try. There were 8 attendees with different backgrounds: product owners, developers, managers, testers, scrum masters.
We started by defining ground rules:
If you are here - then take a part in discussion, be active
If you are bored - better leave
We followed such structure:
- 3 column kanban board: Ready, Doing, Done
- All participants put their ideas and questions to discuss in Ready column. Everyone shortly introduces his idea.
- Each attendee has two votes and may give them to any idea. Sort all ideas by ratings.
- Take top rated idea from Ready, put it in Doing column and start discussing it for 5 minutes.
- After 5 minutes everyone votes: to continue (thumbs-up, another 5 minutes for the same idea) or not (thumbs-down, put it in Done column and take next).
- Repeat with all ideas in Ready column.
- Before leaving everyone shares their take-aways. I would call it a successful experiment: we had well organized, very dynamic, not boring, “everyone involved in” discussion. We are doing it again in two weeks.
Have you ever tried “Lean coffee”? What’s your experience?