Lean Coffee is a great way to establish a free form learning opportunity. These are often once a sprint, and the content is fully driven by attendee interests. There are some great and inexpensive tools to help facilitate Lean Coffee events, but these can easily be managed with a white board, timer and post-its.
Lean Coffee is often one of the first things to surface in a new organization looking to go deep with an agile transformation. These are typically inspired by Agile Coaches initially wanting to help spread the learning about agile ways of working.
Somewhat easy to establish – just set a recurring meeting and see what happens. You should have a dedicated facilitator to start but this can easily be rotated around once people understand how it works.
Gather topics
Vote on the topics
Discuss (time boxed) to topics account to vote count
If the group wants to discuss further then add some time to the clock and get out of the way. If not, then you move on the next topic. Be sure to capture any action items along the way.
Because topics covered are driven by the crowd of attendees the topics can drift all over the place. For example, early on agile might be a top-of-mind concern but as the teams come to master the basics the topics are likely to drift to other areas.