Product Personas in Agile Scrum Projects

The Creation of Product Personas is not brand-new by any ways, it is part of the human existence. Some Personas take on a life of their own in our Imaginations. From Tin-tin to Superman and, more recently, Harry Potter, authors and artists have Visualised Characters that are three-dimensional, problematic and ideal at the very same time. You yourself might have Avatars that you use in Gaming, either resembling you or totally different in every Way. So, when you develop a Persona as an Agile Developer, you have a great deal of inspiration to make use of. True, the clerk in Accounting who will use the Software to be Developed may not be as Charismatic as Iron Man, however they do have distinct Characteristics too.

Agile Product Personas

In 1999, Alan Cooper composed an entertaining book called “The Inmates Are Running The Asylum”, declaring that much of the Technology created is not Customer-Friendly. As a solution, he suggests designing an Agile Persona that would be the User of the Product.

The Concept of a Persona is certainly a helpful Aid when it pertains to Documenting User Stories and Visualizing what the Goals and Objectives are of the Project. It is likely that more than one Persona needs to be described for any reasonably-sized Project. Apart from being a beneficial reference for the final Users of the Product, Personas can be utilized as “Stand-Ins”, when it is proving difficult to acquire the real Users due to scheduling clashes or other reasons. While this is not perfect, it can at least prevent a Project Bottleneck. What is very important is that the Persona is clearly Defined with Demographic and behavioural details.

Do not Confuse a Persona with the “Actor” as Defined in a Use Case, an Actor is merely a Role-player, whose Role can be Defined in a sentence or more, not a Fully Fledged-Persona, who likes curry and dislikes the colour red, delights in pursuits such as scuba-diving and checks out science-fiction. While none of these characteristics may have anything to do with the Product you are Developing, they make the Persona come alive for the Scrum Team (Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team).

Producing Product Personas

The Persona we are about to develop has one or more Goals that are aligned with the Product Vision. There is a handy, basic template for creating a Persona, that contains useful tips on what to describe:

  1. Start off by choosing some standard Demographics, like Age, Gender, Work Status (e.g. at school, contract employee, retired).
  2. Pick a Name and find an illustration for your Persona. There are free websites like Pixabay where you can find an image, or cut one out from a magazine.
  3. You can begin considering why the Persona needs and desires the Product.
  4. Now fill in more Personal Details and Demographics to round out the Persona. Does this Person play sport, have a Facebook account, enjoy crimes series?
  5. Document as you go, utilizing a flip-chart or a white-board. Later you can make a more long-term version of each Persona that ought to be pinned up on the wall near the Product Vision Board.

You need to have a reasonable and credible Persona by the end of this session. This will most likely be the main Persona, who is the most likely to buy the Product. You may want to carry on defining more Personas or stop at this point.

The Persona you have just created will need adjustment as the Project continues. You will most likely need to include information with each Sprint. Often, if a major change is requested during the Scrum Project, you might have to Redefine your Persona(s) completely.

Types of Product Personas

The variety of Personas you need to develop is completely dependent on your Project and Product. In extraordinary cases, where the Software being Developed is a Backend Application, you may not even need a Persona. Typically, you will require a minimum of one (but not more than 2) Primary Personas. Here are typical Personas that will influence your Design:-.

  • The Primary Persona.
  • The Secondary Personas.
  • The Negative Personas.

A combination of the routines, Goals and Objectives of these Personas will help you Visualize the Project results and a completed Product that remains in sync with the expectations of your Users, genuine and fictitious.

Primary Personas.

This is the Persona for whom you are Developing the Product. You should have an extremely clear Goal, a Key Benefit and Objective for the Primary Persona, along with subsidiary Objectives and Benefits. These are the headings for the overall Acceptance Criteria for the Product. They must also synchronise with what was Defined for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
You could have another Primary Persona, but any extra Personas would be Secondary.

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Secondary Personas.

This is a Persona whose Goal and Objectives apply to a particular Product Feature, Epic or User Story. Specifically where a Product is complex, you may discover you require Secondary Personas for a specific Sprint.

The Negative Personas.

You might have previously Worked on a Scrum Project, where the Project Scope was Defined as “What The Project Is”, followed by a Rider that mentions “What The Project is Not”. ‘Negative Personas’ fulfil a comparable function; they are not candidates for the brand-new Product, and their bios explain why the Product is not a great fit for them. This is a useful way of ensuring that all the bases have actually been covered in the Product Design; by defining what is not required, spaces in what is required can be discovered.

In Conclusion.

We hope that we have clarified any doubts you have about developing an Agile Persona and how to render a reasonable and suitable Customer for your Project. Here is an example where Personas were utilized in Design and Development, which might give you some extra inspiration:

Some years back, BMW ran a Campaign called “The Story of Joy”, which you might Remember. The Story behind the Campaign is that each of the People shown in the advert was a Persona and that these Personas were utilized to design the range of Vehicles and the Features used.

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