Lean Coffee Is Underused

A simple technique for running a meeting with a dynamic agenda is Lean Coffee. It surprises me how few people have run one.

I presently use this in two contexts:

• Lean Coffee Austin, a biweekly open meeting
• Austin CTO Club

Everyone who attends these meetings now knows how to run one. And everyone has seen it work effectively in these contexts, even though in the case of Austin CTO Club the group is large for this technique.

People rarely say they already know the technique. It’s been a standard among agile and lean coaches for years. There are many meetings run this way around the world. I’ve seen hundreds if not thousands of people attend them over the years. Why isn’t it more commonly used? It’s not clear to me.

One good context for Lean Coffee in a time-based retrospective meeting. You’ll see all of the topics, whether you get to them or not, and everyone can share their perspective at least at the level of topic creation.

People seem to enjoy Lean Coffee as participants, but that somehow does not translate into trying to lead one themselves.