Affinity Diagrams
Affinity diagrams are your most basic brainstorming tools. They are used to take a chaotic jumble of thoughts and ideas and sort them into coherent groupings. They help you to see all aspects of the problem and to figure out how these aspects are related. This method highlight trends and patterns which otherwise might have gone unrecognized. From there, you can begin to address problems meaningfully, rather than as a scattered collection of unrelated issues.
Interpreting an Affinity Diagram
An excellent source of additional information on this Management & Planning Tool is The Memory Jogger Plus +, by Michael Brassard (Goal/QPC, 1989).