“Why are all the personas the Cranky PM sees littered with this type of crap detail instead of the facts that REALLY matter? Such as: How much time does Vineeta spend working with the application? (…) “

EXACTLY! I don’t care if the person is distracted by her 17 cats or her only child – just let me know that she has short attention span, if that impacts our interaction model ;-).

I just published a column (with the same name, btw) about personas in the most recent issue of ACM Interactions.

I have always believed personas come into play when positioning the product or developing marketing communications. Someone mentioned that this is useful for sales, have you ever met a sales guy who only sells to the target market – sales will try to sell anything to anyone who has money !!

I have always believed personas come into play when positioning the product or developing marketing communications. Someone mentioned that this is useful for sales, have you ever met a sales guy who only sells to the target market – sales will try to sell anything to anyone who has money !!

From a developers perspective, for whom an objective description of needs is of primary importance, the use case is key. For the marketer, for whom a subjective assessment of current emotional/intellectual states is of primary (or at least major importance), the persona is key.

My take-away from this (very enlightening) exchange is that both the persona and the use case are important, albeit to different people, and that I feel strongly that they should align. I’m also going to test whether or not developers enjoy reading the personal just so long as they have the use case to go along with it.

Thanks!

We are not far from agreeing. What is not logical is the leap of faith that some make about personas and “knowing” the customer. I question the efficacy of persona as a means to producing technical requirements. One can develop the best products in the world without personas. Personas are incongruent to their definition if one concentrates on problem solving. Once you start talking about the “real” issues, the personas fade away and now you have use-cases. If you are working with use-cases and produce technical requirements, you are no longer working with personas.

I agree that personas are best when left in the professional hands of product marketers and sales folks. They truly benefit.

Thank you.

They do, by making everyone involved in the creation of that solution intimately and consistently aware of who they are creating for.

The best developers I’ve ever met are keenly interested in knowing more about who they are writing their code for. Whether they get this knowledge through persona descriptions or face-to-face meetings with current and potential customers doesn’t matter, as long as they have it. Both accomplish the same goal.

In the end, we all want to feel like we’re creating products that make a difference – not just throwing another packet of complied code off the end of the assembly line.

There’s a reason that the marketing and sales people want to know more about their buyer – it helps them sell. They are more successful when they get to sell products that were written with the same buyer in mind. Isn’t that axiomatic?

We just need to define the customer, solve problems worth solving and listen to all stakeholders. I over simply? Maybe, but personas don’t get you any closer to solving the problems customer need solved in detail.

If I were managing the promotion of my product/service (advertisements and such) or Sales, then personas would be very helpful, but to say that personas help developers? This is a highly dubious claim.