The User persona

Agile Method: General Overview

Sometimes it is difficult to know who will actually use the project’s outcome. This is where the user persona comes in. They are the concrete representation of the project’s target users.

Note: This post was translated from french with the help of AI. The original post was written with the knowledge of a younger me.

The Persona Sheet

A user persona resembles a role-playing game character sheet (for those familiar with RPGs). This sheet provides an at-a-glance view of all the characteristics of a person.

Through this sheet, we aim to understand their interests, history, culture… We create a fully imagined physical person.

Workshops in Discovery & Framing dedicated to the user persona bring this person to life, giving them substance. Feel free to use role-playing for this.

However, it is crucial not to include the person’s potential relationship with the project outcome, as this could distort their characteristics.

In Agile Marketing

There is no need to introduce this concept in marketing because it is well known. This sheet helps define acquisition channels and ways to reach the target.

It is to this persona that the Stories (or User Stories) are addressed. It is this target that performs the actions described within these Stories.

However, do not hesitate to modify or refine it during Sprints.

It may even need to be completely replaced if the project target changes.

In Agile Development

This sheet is useful for guiding usability and prioritizing the features requested by the client.

In alignment with the Product Owner, developers have a reference for discussion to best describe the User Stories.

Here too, this persona performs the actions described in the User Stories.

It is therefore useful to have multiple user personas depending on the project user roles. One user persona may represent an administrator, another a regular user.

In pure development projects (where the client handles marketing), user personas are defined in Discovery & Framing and validated by the client.

In projects including marketing, user personas can be modified by the marketing teams with validation from the development teams. In this case, the Buyer persona must also be included (the person who purchases the project outcome but does not necessarily use it).

It is even possible for a marketing team representative to become the Product Owner (or a deputy Product Owner) for the development team, since they are assumed to have the best understanding of the user personas.

Download our User Persona Template (odg format, LibreOffice and OpenOffice).

Sources

• Ricoh
• Just in Mind