Managing stakeholders through persona

Abstract

This article describes the idea behind a persona, the application of the tool and the limitations involved when using it. A persona is a one-page description of a fictive character, that represents selected stakeholders. The describing usually contains information such as name, age, occupation, environment, daily task, likes/dislikes etc. (Martin & Hanington, 2012). A stakeholder is defined as any individual or group that has an interest or concert in a specific project, issue or organization (Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition). This article discusses the benefits of using persons in a project management in relation to managing stakeholders. Here personas can contribute to understanding needs and goals of stakeholders, ease the communication of results/decisions and create an overview of the stakeholders and more. Furthermore, this article contains a comprehensive guide with five steps of how to develop personas for a specific project, having the purpose of assisting the project manager (Adlin & Pruitt, 2010) (Tomlin, 2018). Finally, the article discusses the limitations when using the tool. Developing personas can be time and resource consuming and it can take many years to master the tool. The reliability of personas is discussed and the risk of creating “Frankenstein personas”, that doesn’t represent any real stakeholders. Finally, it is mentioned how persona is a very subject and creative tool and therefore not all will love the tool and people should not be forced to use it (Fuglerud et al., 2020).

Introduction

In 1983 Allan Cooper was the first to implement the use of Personas in a Software Development project and popularized it in his book “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity”. The project participants quickly saw the potential in using these “Personas” and naturally began referring to them during their project work as a reference to the users (Cooper, 2003). The tool “Personas” is mainly used in design projects and the project participants together create a fictive profile to represent the stakeholders. This ensures a user centric perspective and humanizes the design process when doing design projects. However, the method can also contribute to project management helping with the problems of; creating an overview of the most important/valuable stakeholders, make it easier to engage the stakeholders during the project and ease the communication and understanding of the stakeholders needs, when using personas as a boundary object (Martin & Hanington, 2012). This article will first describe the idea behind personas, including the benefits of the tool and how it can contribute to project management, then a guide of how to develop personas for projects and finally the limitations involved when using personas.

The idea Behind Personas

What is a persona and what are the benefits of using them?

A persona is usually a one-page description of a fictive character, representing an important stakeholder in the project and it typically includes the following:

• A bio with basic information: name, age, education and occupation.
• Illustration of how the person could look. Often a stock photo of sketch, to avoid any connection to a real identity person.
• A quote summarizing one of the main points about the persona.
• More in-depth description about life situation, environment, goals and behaviour (Martin & Hanington, 2012).

What is a stakeholder

Before going into too much detail with personas, it is firstly important to understand what/who a stakeholder is. In the “Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition” a stakeholder is defined as the following.

“A stakeholder is an individual, group or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program or portfolio” (Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition).

Stakeholders can be many different people, both intern and extern to the project and have different influence and impact on a project. Therefore, it is important to consider which stakeholders that are most important and has the highest impact when developing personas. All stakeholders won’t be equally relevant for the project and it is generally suggested to only develop a few personas. (Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition).

The benefits of using personas in project management

Now that the definition of a stakeholder has been made clear, we can dive more into personas. Personas are used to create project targets based on individual stakeholder needs. When developing a persona, the behavior pattern amongst an individual or group is observed through research and the main needs, behaviors and goals are then defined. When narrowing down the most essential points in personas, it’s easier to ensure that the correct requirements are being prioritized, for the most valuable stakeholders within the project (Martin & Hanington, 2012). The initial goals when developing personas can be narrowed down to the following:

• The personas are relevant to your project and your business goals.
• The personas are based on data or clearly identified assumption.
• The personas are engaging, enlightening or even inspiring to your organization (Adlin, T et. al., 2010)

Other than ensuring that all stakeholders are understood and remembered, it’s also important that the different motives of the stakeholders are understood and that the Project Manager is of these motives. The personas can make it easier for the project manager, to manage all the stakeholders and get an overview of their different agenda and motives.

“The program manager should be the champion for change in the organization and understand the motives of each stakeholder who could attempt to alter the course of the program or intentionally derail it and prevent the program from realizing one or more of its intended benefits or outcomes. ” (The Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition)

By applying personas in a project, the communication between the stakeholders can be eased. Personas can be used as a reference, when communicating research summaries to clients, which makes the results seem more persuasive (Martin & Hanington, 2012). Furthermore, the personas can act representative for the absent stakeholders in a project. This ensures that despite the absence of the stakeholders, their most prioritized values are still being considered when making decisions (Woods et al., 2017). Overall the use of personas can help the Project Manager make better decisions, as it is stated in “The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas”.

“Although having personas participate in discussions may feel a bit forced and awkward at first, this technique ensures that you never stray too far from the customer data that serve as the lifeblood of good decisions” (Adlin & Pruitt, 2010).