Tip: You have two main options for gathering ideas from team members. What is an Affinity Diagram? Materials needed: Sticky notes or cards, marking pens, and large work surface (wall, table, or floor). An affinity diagram offers a way to organize output from brainstorming. It is the organized output from a brainstorming session. Here are some pros and cons of this variation: Benefits. It gets used to create, systematize, and unify information related to a problem, product, complex issue, or process. The affinity diagram process lets a group move beyond its habitual thinking and preconceived categories. This is a great tool to use when sorting Voice of the customer data under broad 'Issues' categories. An affinity diagram shows the relationships between information, opinions, problems, solutions, and issues by placing them in related groups. You’ll see that the four basic steps are: Brainstorm … all ideas are good. An Affinity Diagram is a graphic tool designed to help organize loose, unstructured ideas generated in brainstorming or problem solving meetings and gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships. Affinity diagram is a convenient tool to use after a successful brainstorming session which left you with great many ideas that are scattered and non-connected. Drive group consensus. 81857. The process also highlights areas of deficiency. The affinity diagram organizes a large number of ideas into their natural relationships. The affinity diagram is a business tool used to organize ideas and data. Continue to group ideas based on their similarities until no cards are left. Do MSA on the data. The Affinity Diagram T he Affinity Diagram is the simplest way to organize field data. Now that you have grouped the cards and given them headers, it’s time to make it look more presentable. With the smart floating action buttons and handles, you can change item numbers and shape size easily at will. Node Fishbone Diagram. The Affinity Diagram is a tool used in business planning to organize ideas and thoughts into related categories. Use it to generate, organize, and consolidate information related to a product, process, complex issue, or problem. Quality Glossary Definition: Affinity diagram, Also called: affinity chart, affinity mapping, K-J Method, thematic analysis. After generating ideas, group them according to their affinity, or similarity. Use plus create to add the next shape, and preset color themes to style your diagrams. Directions: An affinity diagram is a visual tool that organizes ideas by themes often used in brainstorming sessions to determine both root causes and potential solutions for a problem. © Cinergix Pvt. In this comprehensive guide, we have covered what affinity diagrams are and how to draw them with some pro tips that you can use along the way. This way you can collect different and useful insight, opinions and perspectives to help arrive at faster solutions or better innovations. Participation by everyone in the group is assured with silent recording (option b, below), but traditional brainstorming can also generate ideas. Sort (Silently). The team can now use a interrelationship diagram, for example, or even a cause-and-effect diagram to get to root causes for late medications. The following example comes from a hospital setting. Affinity Diagram The Affinity Diagram, also known as a KJ diagram, is a business tool invented for organization the large quantity of ideas and data. Example of Affinity Diagram Template You get an infinite canvas area to collaborate with multiple team members in real-time. 69970 . It is the organized output from a brainstorming session. Improve processes. An affinity diagram, above all, stimulates discussion about a problem or issue, opening up possibilities for improvement or solution. If there is no such note, write one. Details of this exercise, which highlights improvement opportunities for the team, are shown in the table below. The entire team gathers around the notes and participates in the next steps. Notice that one of the notes, "Safety," has become part of the heading for its group. Use it to generate, organize, and consolidate information related to a product, process, complex issue, or problem. If a note seems to belong in two groups, make a second note. A few affinity diagram templates are included in the post as well. Following are the simple steps you need to go through when creating an affinity diagram. Benefits of sorting after each session are that: It helps the team gain a shared understanding after each user. ASQ celebrates the unique perspectives of our community of members, staff and those served by our society. The affinity diagram can be a useful tool whether you are brainstorming ideas, sorting through research data, improving a process or solving a problem. Prioritize One can also use this tool when having different ideas in mind to do something. It can be widely used in the planning stages of a problem to organize the ideas and information. The affinity diagram is used to assemble the output from a brainstorming session in an organized way. A team of hiring managers, new employees, human resource managers, and peer employees conducted a brainstorming session and identified 15 problems. By hierarchically grouping the data, or affinity notes that reveal the problems and needs, it acts as the voice of the customer and the issues become the basis for user requirements. This template shows a sample affinity diagram, demonstrating how ideas might be categorized in response to problem that needs to be addressed. Step 4: Polish off your affinity diagram. It can also give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused. Tip: Base assignment on “gut feel,” not through contemplation. Here’s a One-Sheet, Quick Reference Guide on the Affinity Diagram you can download with the directions. For affinity diagramming of research findings, some teams prefer to sort the sticky notes after each participant’s test session, and again after all (four to eight) sessions. T he Affinity Diagram is the simplest way to organize field data. Figure 3 Affinity Diagram On-Time Delivery of Medications. Gather your team and review it. Directions: An affinity diagram is a visual tool that organizes ideas by themes often used in brainstorming sessions to determine both root causes and potential solutions for a problem. You can edit these online instantly to kickstart your project. Affinity diagram. Write down the information you have gathered from your brainstorming session, research, surveys, etc. Affinity diagram templates are broadly used in brainstorming procedures to reach at a productive and favorable idea or decision based on multiple similar ideas. However, if your team is distributed, Conceptboard’s online whiteboard and digital sticky notes is the perfect tool to ensure your team can collaborate just as effectively online. Prioritization matrices Activity network diagram Process Decision Program Charts (PDPC) Plan Do Check Act PDCA The affinity diagram method is a technique for problem solving. An Affinity Diagram (sometimes referred to as an Affinity Chart) is a tool that is used to organize ideas, opinions, and issues and sort them into groups, based on their natural relationships. Affinity diagram along with Six thinking hats can help an individual have a 360 degrees view of the problem statement. Orientation does not cover office hour access times, Classes specific to our company are too infrequently offered, Applications needed for each job are different, Requirements for a laptop need to be identified, Badges need access levels established prior to start, When you are confronted with many facts or ideas in apparent chaos, When issues seem too large and complex to grasp, When collecting and organizing large data sets, When developing relationships or themes among ideas, When reducing attributes to categories that can be addressed at a higher level. Synthesizing ideas into a simple visual framework allows teams to develop new solutions that they might otherwise miss. Tip: Stating the problem in the form of a question (“What are the barriers to on-time delivery of medications?”) can often prove useful. Team members should talk with each other as they arrange the ideas. The rest of the headings were added after the grouping emerged. Don’t rely on the opinion of another when you are moving cards, do it at your own will, without talking. It is a part of Seven Management and Planning Tools, it is usually used right after brainstorming to sort large numbers of ideas into the corresponding groups. Root Cause Analysis. Over several days, everyone reviewed the notes and moved the notes into related groups. Agreed on a statement of the issue or problem. Why should you use it? After generating ideas, group them according to their affinity, or similarity. An affinity diagram is an excellent creativity and productivity tool – so long as you know how to use one effectively. 368. Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. (During a brainstorming session, write directly onto sticky notes or cards if you suspect you will be following the brainstorm with an affinity diagram.) It allows a broad range of ideas to be organized so they can be more effectively analyzed. It is also important to call these “groupings.” Do not place the notes in any order or determine categories or headings in advance. under meaningful categories that are based on common relationships or themes. Improvement teams can then analyze these groups and determine how they affect workflow and processes. Mediate professional conflict. See Figure 3 (below). You can use affinity diagrams … This technique accesses the great knowledge and understanding residing untapped in our intuition. An Affinity Diagram is a tool and technique widely used in organizations that solicits and categorizes a large set of seemingly disparate ideas identified during a brainstorming session into natural groupings. Start by writing the problem statement at the top of the diagram. It arranges the notes from Interpretation Sessions into a hier-archy that reveals common issues and themes across all users. In an affinity diagram process, all of the ideas were written down on "sticky" pages affixed to a board. Attempt to look for relationships between individual ideas and have team members simultaneously sort the ideas (without talking) into five to 10 related groupings. Reviewed final groupings and headers. The Affinity shows the scope of the problem: it reveals in one place all This template shows a sample affinity diagram, demonstrating how ideas might be categorized in response to problem that needs to be addressed. Repeat until all notes are grouped. Labeled each final grouping with a header identifying the general topic that all items in the group share. It gets used to create, systematize, and unify information related to a problem, product, complex issue, or process. We have also included some best practices; stick to them for more effective results. Affinity diagram directions. When using an online collaboration tool like Creately , you can use a square/ note shape to write them down and keep them aside on one side of the canvas. Online Affinity Diagram mapping process. While an affinity diagram may present interesting data and useful ideas, the exercise itself should lead to further analysis. These themes are referred to as affinity sets or affinity groups. The method is reported to have been developed by Jiro Kawakita and so is sometimes referred to as the K-J method. Step 3:  Based on the similarities you identified earlier, come up with header names for each group. Figure 1 Brainstorming for Affinity Diagram Example. Affinity diagram Use an affinity diagram to gather large numbers of brainstorming ideas and put them into logical groups. If you can discover relationships between separate groups, you can categorize them under a superheaders. Example: Problem with Prescription Delivery These themes are referred to as affinity sets or affinity groups. 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