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person who discovers a card that covers the same issue as one of their own is
allowed to remove
his or her own
card, but not someone else's.) If people think of
additional issues they're allowed to add cards.
4.
Sort the cards into groups,
without discussion.
(Discussion doesn't necessarily
improve the quality of the end result but it's almost guaranteed to make the process
take longer.) Keep the groups far enough apart that it's clear what is grouped with
what. If someone disagrees with the way a group has been set up, he or she should
simply move the cards. In particular, look for large groups that could be subdivided
and small groups that have the same theme. This step ends when all the cards have
been placed in a group (a solo card or two is okay) and no one is making further
changes to the groups.
5.
Using sticky notes (I'll assume yellow ones), name each group. The name should
reflect the theme of the group. Each participant has the opportunity to name each
group, and each group can have any number of yellow stickies. But if you get to a
group and it already has a name that you agree with, there is no need to create a
duplicate.
6.
Everyone reads all the group names. On a piece of scratch paper, everyone writes
down the three groups that they believe have
the greatest impact on the success of
the next release.
Ask yourself, "If we had time to address only three of the groups,
which three would I pick?" Choose your top three regardless of whether the work must
be done by you or others—these priorities are for the project, not individual to-do lists.
7.
Voting: Look at your three choices and rank them in order, with 1 being most
important. On the yellow stickies, put an X to indicate your third choice, XX for second,
and XXX for most important.
8.
Find all the yellow stickies containing X's. The number of X's indicates the group's
consensus about the priority of that category of issues. If you find duplicate
categories, combine them. (If there is disagreement that two categories should be
combined—as when one group is a subset of another—it may be more useful to keep
them separate.)
9.
Reality-check the results by asking, "Does everyone agree that these priorities make
sense?" Discuss any dissenting views.
10.
Start at the top of the priority list. Discuss each category in turn: the observations it
contains, the insights you learned, and (if appropriate given those present) how to
solve remaining issues.
Figure 11.2:
Affinity Diagram Process
Note
There is no one "right" way to use this method. The steps in
Figure 11.2
describe the way I
conduct this process with my clients, but I think it's fine to experiment with any variation that
also accomplishes the goal of reaching a group consensus. For example, you can use
different color stickies to represent different kinds of information, give those on the core team
more votes than outsiders, and so on.
An affinity diagram isn't specific to paper prototyping—it's a technique that works well whenever there's
a group of people with a lot of information to sort and prioritize. (A client once told me that she uses the
affinity diagram technique described in this chapter to make family decisions with her four children!)
There are also methods of prioritizing issues other than the affinity diagram; see the following From the
Field box.
From the Field: Prioritizing Issues with Sticky Notes
"I ask everyone to write issues on sticky notes as they observe the tests. Afterward, we go
around the room. Each person reads through their stack of sticky notes and we agree whether
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