5.3 Basic Lean Tools: Affinity Diagram

While there is no right order to learn about the various tools, there is some logic in starting with the affinity diagram.

This tool divides two elements into a five-step process. Part one is identifying potential issues within a problem. Part two is organizing the potential ideas into a usable format. We will walk through each of the five steps in more detail, but the five steps are as follows:

1. State the problem or issue that will be worked on.

2. Generate ideas for the issue in question.

3. Collect the ideas (cards/sticky notes).

4. Arrange the ideas into related groups.

5. Create a title or heading for each group.

Step 1 — State the Problem

This step may sound simple, but it requires some thought. The output of the affinity diagram will be a collection of specific items tailored to your problem statement. This means you want your problem statement to be clear, concise, and specific. For example, if you are working on a group project and your team is struggling, a problem statement that says, “Our group is not going well” is likely to be too broad. The results of your affinity diagram would also be too broad to create actionable recommendations to improve your team’s performance.

A better problem statement could be based on the fact that a team member is not contributing as well as they should. Your new problem statement might be “Bob/Ann is not doing his/her fair share.” This problem statement may still not be specific enough for your situation, but it does help to focus the problem more clearly.

To develop a good problem statement, one suggestion is to use the “who, what, when, where and why” process—also known as the Five Ws. This helps to frame the problem with clarity.

• Who: Bob/Ann

• What: is not contributing enough

• When: when we meet

• Where: at the library

• Why: to work on the Lean Process Project

Or, Bob/Ann is not contributing enough when we meet at the library to work on the Lean Process Project. You may choose to add more detail to the Ws to make a stronger problem statement, but this is a simple but useful start. Finally, please note that the “how” is not included. That will be the result of the affinity diagram.

Step 2 — Generate Ideas/Brainstorm

Brainstorming is a fun and straightforward method for creating a large number of ideas relative to the problem, such as subissues that contribute to the problem and options to address these issues. Brainstorming is for when your group offers up ideas to address the problem. It’s used when you need to collect a broad range of options, want creative or original ideas, and need to build group support for implementing the solution.

The Team

There are three key individuals—or groups—needed to make brainstorming work effectively: The leader, the recorder, and the group members.

The Leader

To begin, the leader should plan for a 30-minute session. Of course, you can go longer or shorter, but there are disadvantages to both of these. The leader should prepare ahead of time to provide needed equipment (whiteboard, Post-it Notes, paper, etc.) to ensure the session can run smoothly.

Once the session starts, the leader will oversee the process and keep people on track until closing the brainstorming process. Finally, at the end of the session, the leader will need to set up the follow-up plan—“What is the next step?” Likely, the leader would set up a time for a follow-up meeting to perform steps 3–5 of the affinity diagram process.

The Recorder

The role of the recorder is to collect the ideas provided during the brainstorming session. There are many ways to do this—Post-it Notes, Excel sheets, whiteboards, etc.—but it is essential to have every idea compiled. This will be discussed more in step 3.

The Group

It is important for all relevant group members to be present. This will help group members be more engaged in seeing the solution through, and will increase the chances of success. Further, more group members means more ideas and a better chance of finding a solution that will work.

The Rules

One of the challenges of brainstorming is that various types of personalities may dominate the process. There are a few key rules that can help.

• Don’t edit what is said.

• Do not criticize ideas.

• Go for quantity of ideas at this point; narrow down the list later.

• Encourage wild or exaggerated ideas (creativity is the key).

• Build on the ideas of others (e.g., one member might say something that “sparks” another member’s idea).

In the end, as long as people are respectful of others and their ideas, this is usually a fun and successful step to gather ideas.

Freewheeling versus Round-Robin

Another challenge is to make every participant involved in the process.

There are two basic types of brainstorming to help this happen: freewheeling and round-robin.

1. Freewheeling: In an informal group of peers, it is often easy to have everyone just shout out their ideas. Such is the freewheeling approach. It is fast, furious, fun, and usually works very well. The group goes until the leader determines that they have run out of ideas.

2. Round-Robin: Just like a round-robin sports tournament, everyone gets a chance. Each person takes a turn systematically to provide an option, idea, or suggestion.

   The advantage here is that one person does not dominate the process. If you have various levels of an organization (e.g., CEO to hourly employees), mixing employee levels might create issues with everyone’s willingness to contribute. A round-robin approach gives each person a chance to participate. Also, a person can “pass” when it is their turn if they don’t have an idea at that moment, and they will get a chance the next time it comes around to them. The round-robin is a little more organized and works just as well.

Regardless of the leader’s choice, both work well and can generate many good ideas.

Step 3 — Collect Ideas

The brainstorming process generates ideas. One of the roles of the recorder is to collect the thoughts. In some situations it is possible to merge steps 2 and 3 and perform them simultaneously. How your group collects ideas is up to your team. A standard method is to have the recorder write them down in front of the group—whiteboards or butcher paper often work well for this. An advantage to this method is that it allows the group to see the previous ideas, which decreases the chances of repetition and increases the chances of possibilities building upon each other as you brainstorm. However, this method requires the recorder to collect all ideas into another format for steps 4 and 5.

An alternative is to have the recorder or individuals write their ideas on Post-it Notes as they create them. This procedure is beneficial if you are freewheeling the process as multiple people can be writing their ideas as they go. Also, it helps when your group moves to the next step. However, Post-it Notes are small, limit text, and can be hard to read in a group setting.

If you have a smartboard or large monitor, a third choice is to post them directly to the computer.

Step 4 — Arrange the Ideas into Related Groups

This section aims to group like recommendations into an organized solution.

Let’s assume for a minute you had an energized group, and they created 50 ideas in their 30 minutes. Your recorder has transferred each idea onto an individual Post-it Note or 3x5 card. You now have a pile of good ideas. How are you going to determine your path forward? This step helps group the ideas to see if recurring themes might be actionable.

It can help to pick a different leader to oversee this step. It is always helpful to have a different perspective.

As before, respect for everyone’s ideas is critical. Also, at this point, no ideas should be changed except for minor corrections or clarification. If you let the group, they will start brainstorming all over again. As the saying goes, “The time for thinking is over.” At this point you don’t need new ideas; you just want to organize the existing ones.

1. Lay out the 50 ideas so that the entire group can see them.

2. Set up the rule for breaking ties (vote, flip a coin, youngest person’s choice, etc.) before you start.

3. Remind everyone that not every card will fit cleanly into a group.

4. Let everyone look at them for a few minutes. It is helpful to limit the crosstalk or conversation between group members initially.

5. Then, ask for suggestions of which cards go together. Usually, 30–40 will likely naturally group into three to five groups. Four to five groups is a good goal.

This process is typically faster than brainstorming, and 15–20 minutes should be adequate. It is likely there will be disagreement between group members. People will be organizing the piles based on different criteria. One member may put together a cost-focused group, while another may be thinking about time. The result is a single card might fit in both. It is okay to disagree—that’s why there’s a tie-breaking process.

One last note: you may end up with nearly identical or duplicate ideas. It is all right to combine or remove redundant ideas.

Please note that in the example in Figure 5.2, there are two ideas that just did not fit into a category down at the bottom right. That’s fine—a good brainstorming session will generate outliers that may still be very important but not fall into a simple category.

Step 5 — Create a Title or Heading for Each Group

As you are putting ideas into groups in step 4, most of the group members used some sort of classification system to fit their criteria: time, money, people, etc. Often the group heading labels are just straightforward extensions of those initial ideas. The group’s headings will be helpful as you go forward to use other tools. They also help identify potential areas where you will want to gather additional data to understand the exact problem and possible solutions. The result of this step is to create your completed Affinity Diagram.

The five-step process has produced an affinity diagram highlighting the problem areas and specific ideas. However, a common mistake in this process step is solving the issues through brainstorming data collection. While good suggestions may be collected, additional data is needed to make better choices. With this in mind, we will transition from the idea generation tool to the first tool that focuses on data collection.