How to exploit Personas approach to improve testing data, team empathy and motivation towards working on the application from unknown domain.

1. Applying Personas in
Business Analysis,
Development and Testing
Zahhar Kirillov
Technical project manager

2. • Zahhar Kirillov, MSc in IT management
• Joined EPAM in 2016
• Background:
– web-developer
– CIO
– partner at UX consultancy
• Current role: Technical project manager
• Working in Zürich on client’s side
WHO AM I?

3. 1. What are Personas?
2. What kind of projects benefit more from using Personas?
2. How different roles could benefit from using Personas?
4. Tips to create meaningful Personas and use them at their best.
Agenda

6. ability to understand
and share the feelings
of another

7. Your goal is to develop an application
to help wealthy people with planning
their retirement, maintaining
standard of life and letting them
enjoy their ‘golden years’.
Imagine…

8. 1. Complicated to get access to end-users to interview them and
get know their life goals, problems, needs, fairs, etc.
What is their ‘life standard’? How do they use technology?
2. Wealth management topic and its terminology is complicated:
What is „Lombard loan“? How „Vested benefit account“ differs
from „Custody account“, etc.?
3. Where from can we get realistic testing data?
Challenges

9. Existing test data
Name: TClient 1, for Testing Marital status: Unknown Date of birth: 01.01.1990
Remarks: asdfasdf jkihjihefhew 74747473y7 jrhjkrjkrjkjker

10. Existing test data
Name: TClient 1, for Testing Marital status: Unknown Date of birth: 01.01.1990
Remarks: asdfasdf jkihjihefhew 74747473y7 jrhjkrjkrjkjker

11. Existing test data
Name: TClient 1, for Testing Marital status: Unknown Date of birth: 01.01.1990
Remarks: asdfasdf jkihjihefhew 74747473y7 jrhjkrjkrjkjker

12. Existing test data
Name: TClient 1, for Testing Marital status: Unknown Date of birth: 01.01.1990
Remarks: asdfasdf jkihjihefhew 74747473y7 jrhjkrjkrjkjker

13. Existing test data
Name: TClient 1, for Testing Marital status: Unknown Date of birth: 01.01.1990
Remarks: asdfasdf jkihjihefhew 74747473y7 jrhjkrjkrjkjker

14. 1. It is difficult to reach and establish trust with end-users in
wealth management, military, medicine, public administration,
luxury real estate and some other industries.
2. Lack of domain knowledge puts additional obstacles when
defining User stories and designing UX.
3. Artificial test data makes it difficult to validate User Stories.
4. Without empathy towards end-users it is hard to keep little
details in focus and keep team motivated in a long run.
What is the problem?

15. Aren’t we smart enough
to handle it ‘as is’?

16. One difference between
a smart programmer
and a professional programmer
is that the professional
understands that clarity is a king.
“Clean Code”, by Robert C. Martin

17.  a method used in user-centered design;
 developed by UX consultant Alan Cooper in 80-s;
 brings a representation of a user into SDLC;
 a collective portrait of a typical user, with touch of personality;
 describes goals, needs, fears, motivation, and interests;
 typically based on field research, interviews or educated guess;
 created by UX designer, or BA with UX research skills.
Personas

18. • Recently retired from CFO position at Nestle S.A.
• Family:
• husband Kurt (68), university professor
• 2 children (33 and 30 years), live separately
• 2 grandchildren (12 and 7)
• Has savings and shares for 200k EUR
• Owns together with husband:
• 3-bedroom apartment in Münich (550k EUR),
• A holiday home in Italy (350k EUR)
• Collects pearl jewelry by Mikimoto (150k EUR)
• Wishes to:
• travel the world (100k EUR),
• secure good education for grandchildren (200k EUR),
• support charity (10k EUR per year),
• invest into FinTech (seeks for advise).
• Meets hers personal advisor Benjamin Meyer twice a year
• Reads new reports on paper, discusses with husband
Bettina Muster (66), PhD, married

19.  Conduct 5-30 interviews (ca 1h each) with real users
 Workshop with marketing and business development
department
 Dig into existing analytics, news articles and
Wikipedia for insights
 Focus on user experience, habits, goals, fears, pain,
needs.
How to create a Persona? (1/2)

20.  Understand their physical abilities (example: uses
glasses) and limitations (example: no smartphone)
 Use one of free templates to present your findings
 Add a suitable photo on Flickr or other image search
(with respect to copyright, check for CC license)
 Discuss Personas with project stakeholders to get
their approval
How to create a Persona? (2/2)

21. FEW THINGS TO AVOID
• Well-known names
(Donald Duck, Bill Gates)
• Stock images, clipart or
grotesk pictures
• Unnecessary details
• Idealization
• Contact details, or any
customer identifying data
• Long bio / CV
• Random data

22. • Typically: 1 is better then 0, but you rarely need more then 5
• Start with one. Add until you see, that personas start sharing the
same goals, pains, needs, motivation and context, so they differ only
in formal attributes (age, color of eyes, etc.)
• Sometimes Persona = User role, but
• there might be 1 Persona in multiply roles (Github user)
• or 1 role that requires several Personas (Uber driver)
HOW MANY PERSONAS DO I NEED TO CREATE?

23. Bettina ― typical user,
represents a real customer
Kurt (husband) ― has all possible
data, features and values set.
Can’t be real, but useful for
testing.
Paloma (daughter) ― has only
mandatory fields set, almost no
data. Very rare case in real life,
but practical for testing.
Benjamin (client advisor) ―
handy to test access rights,
GUI and report generation
procedure.

25.  Validates design decisions with business.
 Understands the domain terminology.
 Distinguishes ‘pet features’ from real user pain points.
 Converts formal requirements into meaningful user
stories.
Personas for Product Owner
and Business Analyst

26. Bettina shares most of her wealth
with husband Kurt, they plan
income and expenses together
Bettina is 66, she wears glasses
and her visual ability will
decrease over time
Bettina’s list of family members,
assets and life goals is short (up
to 5 entries, but not 25)
In addition to the individual
report there is a need for a
„Family report“
8pt font is too small, let’s
start with 10pt, shorter text
lines and larger line spacings
Present assets and liabilities
on the same page, to improve
overview and comparison

27.  Prioritize stories and bugs in the backlog.
 Conduct consistent and interesting sprint demos.
 Gain empathy by putting aside your viewpoint, and trying to
see things from the Persona's point of view.
 Keep motivation when working under time pressure or
working on dull or easy tasks.
 Enjoy an opportunity to have a secret language and jokes
that other teams can’t understand.
Personas for Developers
and Project Managers

28. ― Please check why remarks for real
estate are not displayed for Kurt?
― Yesterday I fixed a null-pointer
exception, now Bettina’s report
looks nice again
― Title page is broken because
Benjamin left the bank and
Bettina has no client advisor
assigned anymore!

29.  Unique names help to search and communicate.
 Realistic data helps to prepare valid test cases and
better automation scripts.
 Relations between Persona’s help to navigate through
the GUI and observe how same test data is reflected in
different use-cases.
 Variety of personas with different data constellations
helps to cover most of business scenarios without
having too much isolated test-cases.
Personas for Test engineers

30.  Include Persona creation in your Project plan
 Talk to business or marketing when users are not available
 Bring Personas at any time during SDLC, not only in the beginning
 Store Personas as part of Specification in Confluence or other tool
 Share your Personas with all your colleagues by printing out and
making them visible to everyone
 Revise personas 1-2x times a year
 Think at least once a day: “What if I were [Persona Name]”
Take away

31. Thank you!
zahhar_kirillov@epam.com