What is the Affinity Mapping template?
Organize and consolidate any ideas or suggestions from brainstorming sessions or recent research studies. Use the affinity mapping process to develop more innovative and adequate solutions to complex problems. Reach a consensus with your team after analyzing the data sets.
Start the exercise by stating the main topic and documenting opinions, suggestions, or feedback on separate sticky notes. Create clusters for specific groups to see which ones stand out the most. Conduct a voting session to differentiate the most significant ideas and prepare action points by defining their value and effort.
What are the benefits of the Affinity Mapping template?
Thanks to the Affinity Mapping template, you can:
- Organize any information that comes from the brainstorming session or research studies.
- Allow your teammates to incorporate their perspectives by sharing their thoughts and opinions.
- Discover fresh connections between ideas or various components of the project.
- Dive deeper into each new concept by organizing thoughts and delegating responsibilities.
- Synthesize ideas and suggestions into a visual but simple framework allowing teams to develop original solutions.
How to use the Affinity Mapping template in a few steps?
- Open the ready-made template on a new whiteboard or insert it into an already existing board.
- Define the main topic, challenge, or research area in the designated frame.
- Divide your findings into separate groups and add all observations on sticky notes. One sticky note should contain only one piece of information. Use the same color of sticky notes from the same group.
- Find patterns and cluster sticky notes into themes. Name the themes that emerge.
- Choose the areas you want to focus on first by conducting the dot voting session or enabling the voting feature from the right-hand side panel. If you choose the dot voting option, remind your teammates to use dots in the same color to know which votes were cast by whom.
- Prioritize the most voted topic on the Value Effort Matrix template by placing them in the appropriate quadrant: Easy Wins, Big Bets, Money Pits, or Incremental.
- Turn the sticky notes from the Value Effort Matrix template into actionable Jira items in two clicks and continue your work.
**The example exercise has been prepared by Eva Schicker.
Use this template