Meetings
Lean coffee template
To discuss, discussing and discussed. The group writes the agenda, votes on topics and timeboxes each one.
What it is
Lean coffee is a meeting without a set agenda. The people in the room write the topics on sticky notes, vote on them and talk through the most popular ones first, each in a short timebox. Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith started it in Seattle in 2009, for a group that wanted to talk about Lean in knowledge work without speakers or a steering committee. This board has the three usual columns, To discuss, Discussing and Discussed, plus a Takeaways frame. The sample notes show an example session, so you can see how votes and timeboxes look on the board.
When to use it
- For a monthly team sync or a meetup where everyone brings questions and nobody owns the agenda
- Instead of a retro when the sprint went fine and people would rather raise their own topics than answer set questions
- With a group from several teams, where a fixed format would only fit half the room
- Run a regular retro instead when you need to look back at one sprint or project, because its columns keep everyone on the same stretch of work
How to run it
- 01
Propose topics
Give everyone five minutes to write topics in To discuss, one per note. Then each person introduces their notes in a sentence or two, so the group knows what it's voting on.
- 02
Dot-vote
Everyone gets two votes and can put both on one topic. Draw the dots on the notes with the pen, then sort To discuss so the note with the most dots is on top.
- 03
Talk in timeboxes
Move the top note into Discussing and start a timer on a phone. Agree on the length before the first topic, eight minutes for example, and keep it the same for every topic.
- 04
Roman vote to continue
When the timer ends, everyone shows a thumb. Up means keep going, sideways means no strong view, down means move on. If most thumbs are up, add a shorter round. Otherwise move the note to Discussed and write any decision in Takeaways.
Opens a new board from this prompt:
"Lean coffee for a monthly meetup of twelve product managers, with topics about hiring and roadmaps"
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