Nice post by Scott Sehlhorst at Tyner Blain on splitting user stories:
User stories were created as lower-overhead use cases that served to better describe chunks of valuable software that could be rapidly developed, delivered, reviewed, used, and improved. Writing user stories that undermine that intent – rapid, valuable, incremental delivery – is a bad way to write user stories.
Source http://tynerblain.com/blog/2010/09/08/sprint-backlog-splitting-user-stories/
In particular, good user stories are about the persona, not the product. Or as Scott puts it: "The right approach is to first solve all of the problem for a subset of the users."
Alas, many of the "roles" definitions we see are not personas but vague titles. "As a provider of IT support..."?? Man! That isn't specific! What kind of IT support? Linux, Mac, Windows, mobile? What kind of organization is supported? Large business, mom-and-pop shop, family, everyone who has met a member of my family?
Agile is supposed to help you make better products faster. Focus on personas and their problems and a lot of the rest falls into place.
I remember the first cell phone bill I received and I remember saying, "What is texting and who is doing it!!!" Oh how things have changed. While today's adults are sending 10 texts per day, teenage boys are sending 30 or more and teenage girls are sending over 100!
Do you know your personas? How do they learn about new products? How important is the quality/ brand/ feature set? What features can you omit and which are required?The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.
The class of 2014 has never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day. They don’t own watches and instead use their cellphones to tell the time.
My travel service writes:
In order to ensure your company receives the optimal value from this airline ticket, it is imperative any changes or cancellations are reported prior to your flight's original date of departure. This value may have a limited time for future use so be certain to find out all the details upon cancellation.
It's certainly clear who matters to the travel service, isn't it? Not, "Steve, you have a trip coming up. Are YOU ready?" but "don't you want to make sure the company receives the optimal value?"
I think this is a negative case of buyer personas and user personas.
Check out this brilliant Stratus Air concept project from Cooper Interaction Design. As a frequent flier, I want it now!
Product managers and designers should pay attention to the research aspects of the video, particularly the development of personas and their goals.
Here's a success story on personas and their problems. Skullcandy makes headphones designed for snow boarders. Because they involve their personas in the product design, they get products that snow boarders want to buy and they tell their friends. To the tune of $85M in revenues.
Watch the video on MSN.
Lessons: Immerse yourself in your personas and their problems and you'll design a remarkable product. But it's not just about design, it's about careful marketing through the right distribution channels.
Thanks to Alain for sharing this video with me.
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will amaze you with their ingenuity." –George Patton.
Robin bought Dr. John Gray’s book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
to learn techniques for communicating better with the men and women on
her product team. She learned that men are problem-solvers while women
emote. She learned that men who are frustrated want to be left alone
while frustrated women want to share with the others. (And of course,
she realized that these are archetypes that don't necessarily fit
everyone.)
Robin got some helpful tips for work and she shared the book with her mom. “Maybe you can use this to communicate with Dad better,” she said. A month later, her mom called and said, “I liked the book. It made some good points. But what I still don’t understand is this: how do I get your father to do what I want him to do when I want him to do it and how I want him to do it.”
Uh-oh. Mom doesn’t care about communicating; she cares about mandating. Dad isn’t a partner; he’s a factory worker.
Are you leading a team of partners or are you managing a project with factory workers. Most development projects require committed, informed, enthusiastic people. They don’t need to be told what to do and how to do it; they need to understand the problems to be solved. Give them a problem and get out of the way.
The iPad's future shock
Seems that loads of people have scorn for the new iPad but... are you the target persona? This article suggests that the iPad is for people who struggle with computers... and that's not you. The iPad is for all the people in your life that don't understand folders. It's for people who have all their files on the desktop. And why do we need files anyway? or Folders?
What have you done to understand personas and their goals? Are you programming to yourself and your developers and your sales people? Or are you programming to the personas?
Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management
Posted on January 30, 2010 at 04:50 PM in Industry News & Commentary, Personas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)