Integrated Project Management

The Affinity Diagram

When a manager in any business setting tackles a problem or opportunity, input often is needed from a broad group of informed colleagues. Their combined experience and imagination can be a great contribution to the effort at hand; their ideas invaluable to the initial decision-making process. This situation often comes up in the area of process improvement and in the general area of improving quality. Leaders of the modern quality movement invented a device to help capture worker input and to systematically organize it. It is called the affinity diagram.

The process is simple. First, the workers are asked to each make a list of suggestions relevant to the decision-making process for the effort at hand, being as thorough as ...