Affinity Diagram

The Affinity Diagram is an analysis tool that allows a team to systematically generate a large volume of ideas or inputs about a problem or issue and organize these into logical groupings to promote a fuller understanding of the problem or issue and facilitate its resolution.

The affinity diagram is good for: 1) encouraging people to become creative in providing their inputs to unravel a problem; 2) promoting communication among different members of a team; 3) identifying both the natural and non-conventional links between ideas; 4) bringing out breakthrough results in a natural way; 5) enhances the feeling of ownership of results among team members; and 6) preventing a team from meeting a blank wall when the information either becomes overwhelming or confusing.

To construct an affinity diagram, the following steps are usually followed:

1) state the problem or issue of interest in one full sentence (see example in Fig. 1);

Figure 1. Example of a Problem Statement for an Affinity Diagram

2) brainstorm at least 20 ideas or sub-issues that can contribute to the understanding and resolution of the problem or over-all issue at hand and write each input in large, bold letters on a sticky note; post each sticky note on a board that's visible to the entire team (see Table 1 for ideas brainstormed for the problem in Figure 1);

Table 1. Ideas Generated for the Problem Statement in Figure 1

3) sort the ideas from the brainstorming into 5-10 related groupings by silently moving the sticky notes around; very large groupings may be further broken down into smaller subgroups, as long as each subgroup represents a common idea;

<Proceed to Page 2>