Overview |  | Roles |  | Work Items |  | Views |  | CMMI |  | Index |  | Glossary |

Project Portal
| See Also Personas: Practice and Theory |
| Define Personas ( 3 : IPM : 3 : 3.2 ) ( 3 : IT : 2 : 2.1 ) Business Analyst
Activity: Define Personas
Business Analyst
|  |  |  | Envision |  |
|  | Participating Roles Responsible: Business Analyst Consult: Product Manager
### Overview A persona is a fictional individual who is representative of users for a particular market segment. Personas are used to reason through the needs of an entire market segment by examining the characteristics of one fictional individual. To define a persona, examine a market segment defining a class of users that interact with the product, collect the skills, abilities, and goals that those users share, and create a fictional person to represent the market segment. Personas are a means of elaborating information about users from the vision statement. Personas are used to create scenarios and conduct exploratory testing. # Entry Criteria Product Vision Statement Provides identified market segments for developing personas. When: Initial vision statement is created. # Sub-Activities
1 | Analyze Market Segments | For each market segment identified in the vision statement, consider the user community for the market segment. Determine if more than one persona is required to adequately represent the market segment. Identify one or more personas per market segment. If the vision statement does not contain enough information to analyze all market segments, consult the product manager for more information. If the system houses assets that might lead to security requirements, be sure to include disfavored personas such as unauthorized users.
2 | Create Personas | Gather real data to create a persona. Use data obtained from usability studies, user visits, focus groups and marketing studies to make sure the persona represents reality. Group the related knowledge, skills, and abilities with the goals of the persona. Open a new persona template for each grouping. Complete the persona descriptions by including a short life history, personality quirks, or interests and hobbies. Adding personal details makes the persona more realistic. Include links back to data used to build the persona. Name the persona with a real name and save the persona using that name as the file name. Publish the persona to the project portal.
# Exit Criteria
| All market segments are represented by personas, and the personas are published to the project portal.
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MSF for CMMI Process Improvement: 1.00.0000.00 |