Understanding Agile Personas: Creating and Utilizing Them

While the concept of personas is widely recognized in the realm of marketing, it takes on a distinct role within the agile context. Let’s delve into how personas are created and applied in an agile environment.

Defining Your Personas

Creating personas isn’t always straightforward. The goal is to identify distinct user types and associate them with specific journeys.
For instance, consider an e-commerce website, where different users navigate unique paths—customers, administrators, logisticians, and webmasters. In marketing, various customer segments yield multiple personas; however, in agile, personas are crafted based on journeys. Regardless of the customer type, the user journey and required functionalities remain consistent.

Agile leverages personas to enhance product vision and identify those impacted by functional requirements.

An example user story for the persona “customer” might be:

“As a customer, I want to add a product to my cart.”

Understanding Agile Personas

Here’s a visual representation of a persona—an essential component of visual management within agile projects.

To create a comprehensive persona, compile a sheet outlining the context, goals/behaviors, and implications.

Picture: A picture or drawing can humanize the persona and provide a visual starting point.

Context: Describing the persona, including factors like age and gender, yields valuable insights into possible behaviors.

Goals and Behaviors: Understand the persona’s objectives to tailor responses with your product.

Implications: Address the persona’s needs by defining actionable solutions.

Displaying project goals prominently can enhance visibility and alignment.

Conclusion

The veil has been lifted from personas. Embrace their utility within your agile projects. Incorporating personas empowers teams to better understand users and develop products that align with their needs.