The Seven New Quality Tools used in Healthcare Project Management

The Seven New Quality Tools The affinity diagram is an effective technique used to handle large numbers of ideas, typically during a brainstorming session. It helps with organizing, prioritizing, and categorizing diverse views and opinions based on each team member’s knowledge of a particular subject. The team should consist of people with different backgrounds, knowledge, and skills. Diversifying the team members helps present new, out-of-the-box ideas and facilitates in melding opinions and perspectives. It also allows discovery of root causes, common themes, and unseen connections between ideas and information. After choosing the appropriate team members and inviting them to the meeting, the key steps for hosting the group discussion using the affinity diagram are as follows: 1. Introduction of self, team members, topic of discussion, and objectives. 2. Invite all to participate in contributing ideas and opinions and write them down on large individual Post-It notes (or equivalent). 3. Place the notes in the middle of the table and ask the members to re-arrange and organize the ideas into related groups silently. If an idea falls into more than one category, place another Post-It with the same idea in both groups. 4. Participants can now discuss on the different grouping patterns and focus on controversial ideas. If a conflict arises, try and reach a general consensus and make any necessary changes in grouping. 5. After the ideas have been arranged, select a short heading to categorize each group. 6. Finally, move groups under each heading to view the affinity diagram. Once the affinity diagram is complete, the prioritized ideas are now ready for further management decisions and approvals. A simplified example of the affinity diagram process is shown below in Figures (A) and (B)

Figure (A) – Example listing of all team members’ ideas to be categorized

Figure (B) – Example of a completed affinity diagram.

The affinity diagram