Affinity Diagram Template

About the Affinity Diagram template

What is an affinity diagram?

An affinity diagram is a visual brainstorming tool that allows teams to organize ideas according to their natural relationships. We’ve all participated in brainstorming sessions that seemed to go nowhere, and with so many people are sharing a large number of ideas and perspectives, it can be difficult to distill these conversations into a coherent takeaway. This is where an affinity diagram comes in handy.

Benefits of using an affinity diagram

You can use an affinity diagram to generate, organize, and consolidate information that comes out of a brainstorming session. Whether you’re building a product, working through a complex problem, establishing a process, or piecing apart an issue, an affinity diagram is a useful and simple framework.

Incorporate everyone’s perspective

An affinity diagram gives each team member the opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas about the topic. By collecting everyone’s brainstorming ideas, an affinity diagram functions as a visual representation of a brainstorm that everyone can add to.

Find connections between ideas

Affinity diagrams are also a great way to discover novel connections between various different components of a project. Synthesizing ideas into a simple visual framework allows teams to develop new solutions that they might otherwise miss.

Organize team thoughts and ideas

Finally, an affinity diagram is a valuable tool of organization that divides a project into various discrete components and allows you to dive deeper into each individual component. Organizing thoughts in this way can help you break up tasks and delegate responsibility.

When to use affinity diagrams

Teams and organizations use affinity diagrams in a variety of situations. When your brainstorming session feels like it’s devolving and there are too many ideas to capture, or when the issues are too large and complex to grasp, you can use an affinity diagram to cut through the chaos. But it’s not only useful during chaotic meetings; you can also use an affinity diagram whenever a consensus is needed, when analyzing data such as survey results, when grouping ideas into themes, or when organizing datasets.

Create your own affinity diagram

Making your own affinity diagram with your team is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share your own. Get started by selecting this Affinity Diagram template. Then, follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Ideation

The first step of the process is to start recording the ideas that you’d like to sort into categories. Get everyone in the team involved and ask them to put forward a few ideas.

Step 2: Diagramming

Next, examine the ideas and try to find related concepts. Then, discuss with the group and start to tentatively draw connections between ideas. Invite team members to add sticky notes sharing their perspective. When you notice related concepts, group them together. Repeat this step until you’ve grouped all the concepts.

Step 3: Grouping

Repeat step 2 until you’ve grouped all the concepts. It’s okay if there are concepts that seem to defy a grouping. You can return to those later.

Step 4: Team discussion

Discuss with your team and make sure everyone is on the same page. Do you agree with the groups? How should you label them? Do you need to make any changes

Step 5: Synthesize ideas

Finally, combine these groups into “supergroups”, to synthesize ideas into a more cohesive whole.. The completed affinity diagram can be used to enhance future project management and inform decision making.