feature

Easily merge topics to focus the conversation

Clayton Lengel-Zigich
By Clayton Lengel-Zigich • May 3rd, 2022

In every Lean Coffee meeting there are always a few topics that are very similar. Instead of discussing them all separately, it's now easy to merge them into one topic.

Why you get duplicate topics

It’s very common during a Lean Coffee meeting to have participants who unknowingly generate very similar topics. Especially when the meeting is more narrowly focused on a particular event like a sprint retrospective. For example, a team might add a handful of similar topics about how they need a better continuous integration pipeline.

But instead of voting on all of these topics separately and then discussing them all separately, it’s best to merge them into one topic.

That’s why we added the ability for the facilitator to merge topics together during the gathering phase.

How to merge similar topics

  1. During the gathering phase click the “Merge topics” button in the Facilitator Controls.
  2. Choose which topics you want to merge together.
  3. Click the “Merge these topics” button

You’ll see a new topic created that has all of the content from the original topics. The old duplicate topics are deleted.

You can also cancel merging by clicking the “Cancel merge” button in the Facilitator Controls.

Happy merging!

Feedback

Is there a way we can make merging topics even better? Let us know by reaching out [email protected].