--- name: affinity-diagram description: "A workshop-style synthesis of curated customer notes into themed clusters — the same clustering discipline as sticky notes on a wall, done in minutes with the tally and vital-few themes computed for you. Use when: You've already gathered a set of quotes or observations (from interviews, tickets, surveys, or gemba notes) and want to synthesize them into a small number of themes in one sitting. You're preparing for or running a workshop and want a first-pass clustering to react to and adjust, rather than starting from a blank wall. Not for: You're capturing evidence as it comes in over time rather than synthesizing a curated set in one session — that's the VOC evidence log itself. You only have two or three notes total — there's not enough material for a clustering exercise to reveal a real pattern. You already know the themes and just want confirmation — genuine synthesis means letting the notes suggest the clusters, not the other way around." --- # Affinity diagram A workshop-style synthesis of curated customer notes into themed clusters — the same clustering discipline as sticky notes on a wall, done in minutes with the tally and vital-few themes computed for you. Family: Voice of the customer · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is An affinity diagram groups a set of individually-true observations into themes — the classic version is sticky notes moved around a wall until patterns emerge. This does the same synthesis from a curated set of quotes and observations gathered ahead of time: a theme gets drafted for every note, then it's yours to reassign until the clustering feels right, with the tally updating live as you edit. Where a VOC evidence log is a running capture tool you add to over time, an affinity diagram is a discrete session on notes you've already pulled together — same underlying method, different moment in the process. ## When to use it Use it when: - You've already gathered a set of quotes or observations (from interviews, tickets, surveys, or gemba notes) and want to synthesize them into a small number of themes in one sitting. - You're preparing for or running a workshop and want a first-pass clustering to react to and adjust, rather than starting from a blank wall. - You want the vital-few themes named with a defensible tally, not just a gut sense of 'a few people mentioned pricing.' Not when: - You're capturing evidence as it comes in over time rather than synthesizing a curated set in one session — that's the VOC evidence log itself. - You only have two or three notes total — there's not enough material for a clustering exercise to reveal a real pattern. - You already know the themes and just want confirmation — genuine synthesis means letting the notes suggest the clusters, not the other way around. ## How to fill it in - **scope** — Which accounts, segment, or population does this curated note set cover, and what prompted pulling it together for a synthesis session? - **entries** — Enter each quote or observation you've already gathered, with its source, source type, and date. This is the curated set for the session, not everything you've ever collected. - **themeSummary** — Drafted from your notes, then genuinely yours to edit — reassign any note's theme during the session and the clustering updates immediately, the same way moving a sticky note to a different pile would. - **narrative** — Drafted from the top themes — what the clustering, taken together, actually suggests. - **nextSteps** — What will the team do with this synthesis, ranked by impact and effort, owned and dated? A next step not tied to a named theme is a coaching failure mode, not a real action. ## What good looks like The example below is a workshop-style synthesis of nine at-risk-account notes into four themes: two tied for the largest cluster (pricing confusion and missing integrations), a third notable theme (slow support), and one single-note theme correctly left out of the vital-few list rather than forced into significance. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/affinity-diagram ## Common mistakes - **Running the synthesis with too few notes to reveal a real pattern.** — A handful of notes can't tell the difference between a real cluster and coincidence — affinity diagramming needs enough raw material for a theme to mean something beyond one person's opinion. - **Forcing every note into a theme, including a single outlier note that doesn't fit anywhere.** — Same vital-few discipline as every other artifact in this catalogue — a genuine one-off observation is worth noting, not stretched into a cluster it doesn't belong to. - **Treating the first draft of theme labels as final instead of adjusting them during the session.** — The whole value of this exercise is the team reacting to and correcting the first-pass clustering together — accepting the draft without discussion skips the actual synthesis. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Voice of the customer (VOC) evidence log** (`voc-evidence-log`) — The curated notes an affinity-diagramming session works from typically come from an ongoing evidence log — pull the relevant subset in rather than starting from nothing. Downstream: - **Critical-to-quality (CTQ) tree** (`ctq-tree`) — Once a theme is named with real weight behind it, a CTQ tree is where you'd translate it into a specific, measurable requirement. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a drafted cluster is actually right, or moving a note to a different theme during the session - Deciding which theme is worth acting on first Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting a first-pass theme label per note from its actual content - Drafting the narrative from the top themes Drudgery — automated: - Tallying notes per theme and computing each theme's share of the total, with the arithmetic shown - Identifying the vital-few top themes - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Affinity diagram is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/affinity-diagram.