Toronto Product Management Meeting
“Personas and their Problems”
Housekeeping:
Meeting: Last Tuesday of every month
New attendees: welcome! Please sign up to the TPMA Yahoo Group
Help Required:
TPMA needs help on the organizational committee; help get the small PM groups organized. If you are willing to participate please let the group know.
Introductions
Steve Johnson and Jim Foxworthy of Pragmatic Marketing:
http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com
Problems for the Personae
Steve: Many people have asked him if there is a 12-step program for product managers. Steve is sharing with us the research and observations he and Jim have made into personas: the concept of articulating perfectly clearly the end users and markets for your products.
Problems: We have lost our way. We are so enamoured with features, we have forgotten about problems.
Articulate the problem:
“we need to write stuff down in zero gravity”
not
“we need a pen that works in outer space”
Features are driven by “New Users” and “Power Users”, not by the “Regular People” Our developers are Power Users; they will develop products that appeal to the “Power Users”.
We have a responsibility as product managers to gather requirements based on the personas of the “Regular People”. We do this by getting in the shoes of front- line, customer-facing positions in the company, and talking to new users. Product Managers should leave the building: meet prospects, customers and the
other regular people that use the product.
Your goal: contact the people that buy your product, regularly purchase / renew the upgrade, and never call tech support: the (wealthy) “Regular Users”
Introducing the Persona:
Personas: Creating ideal, stereotypcial user
· Name, gender, age
· Education level, computer literacy
· Background
· Current job situation
Program only to these specific users
· Not “someone might want to do this”
Who do you want to DELIGHT?
Personas: Make sure you use personas that you are intimately knowledgeable about; avoid choosing a pop culture personae that may carry a lot of baggage that is not shared.
Roles and Respect
Problem: Product Management
Product: Development
Promotion: Communications
Placement: Sales Channel
One CTO said to product management,
“If you start writing personas and problems, you can stop writing requirements.”
