A guide to Lean Coffee

A tool for effective meetings

Lean coffee cups by Ad Esse Consulting

What is Lean Coffee?

Energise your day with Lean Coffee. Lean Coffee is a tool that we use at Ad Esse Consulting to discuss topics that interest you in a short, yet productive meeting. Our simple 7-step guide enables participants to gather, build an agenda and begin discussing.

How to introduce Lean Coffee into your team

Step 1: Create a Kanban board

Step 2: Brainstorm topics. Capture topic ideas on post-it notes, 1-2 per participant.

Step 3: Pitch topics. Explain your topic to the group in a couple of sentences.

Step 4: Vote and prioritise topics. Everyone gets three votes. You can put multiple votes on a single topic.

Step 5: Discuss. Initially 10 minutes. Plus further 5 minute extensions.

Step 6: Vote on whether to extend the conversation. Update Kanban board.

Step 7: Reflect and capture learning.

Lean Coffee in our CI Practitioners Forum

We run regular Lean Coffee sessions in our CI Practitioners Forum. If you’re committed to continuous improvement and have worked with us before, you’re eligible to join our community. If you haven’t worked with us personally but we’ve worked with your organisation, you’re also welcome to join. You can register your interest here.

You might also be interested in our Daily Meetings guide.