![]() The exercise is designed to quickly get teams on the same page about a problem that needs to be solved. What is affinity mapping?Īffinity mapping is an agile technique used to solve problems by distilling many ideas into the best solution or path forward. It’s most helpful when you have a large amount of data to sort and when you need to distill all of that data into specific solutions the whole team agrees on.Ĭontinue reading to learn more about affinity mapping, including when to use the maps, the benefits of affinity maps, and how to run an affinity mapping session. □Īffinity mapping is an agile technique that helps teams reach a consensus after a brainstorming session, usability testing, or user research survey. After all the data are positioned, label each grouping with a descriptive header.Brainstorming as a group can generate a ton of ideas, but what do you do with all of those ideas after you’ve come up with them? How do you organize an entire team’s ideas? How do you narrow down the best solution? And how do you document the ideation session so you don’t lose any data? Never fear - affinity mapping is here. Just work quickly and quietly to find relationships between the data. ![]() Don't be afraid to move other people's notes and to leave some notes as loners. The idea is to go for the gut feeling rather than deliberation. Not being allowed to talk discourages arguments and justifications. Once all the data is collected, the group silently move the notes around into related groups. The data before affinitizing are shown below: Information about customer wants/needs regarding service and room quality was gathered from several sources. When done virtually, software can be used to digitize and organize the information. When done in a room together, this might look like post-it notes spread all over the table. It can be used very effectively to organize the ideas extracted from a brainstorming exercise where people from diverse and unrelated departments might come together to solve a complex problem. It may be used in situations that are unknown or unexplored by a team, or in circumstances that seem confusing or disorganized, such as when people with diverse experiences form a new team, or when members have incomplete knowledge of the area of analysis.Ĭonstructing an Affinity Diagram is best done as a team activity. ![]() The Affinity process is a good way to get people to work on a creative level to address difficult issues. The Affinity Diagram tool is used to consolidate a large amount of information into groupings or clusters of ideas that have a natural 'affinity', or 'common thread' running through them. ![]() Affinity Diagrams are useful in answering the question: "How do the individual items within a list of items relate to one another?" ![]() Within process improvement projects, the most common use of an affinity diagram is during the Define phase of a DMAIC project when Voice of the Customer Data is categorized and transformed into specific CTQC requirements. Affinity diagrams stimulate the creative problem-solving process by helping to organize and consolidate a large amount of information. ![]()
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