Plan, Design, Evaluate, Release: How to Use Personas During the Stages of Product Development

Let’s look back at the traditional waterfall model of product development we briefly discussed in Chapter 2 (see Figure 6.1). You will note that in an ideal situation persona adulthood extends over the majority of the development process. In fact, persona adulthood may even continue after development is complete, beyond the release phase, providing help to marketing, sales, operations, and support. For this chapter, we have further simplified the waterfall model into four distinct development stages (see Figure 6.2). The rest of this chapter is organized according to these four stages. For each stage, we provide several usage techniques and tools that engage your personas to the benefit of your team and product.

Figure 6.1. The classic waterfall model of software development with persona lifecycle phases added. (Adapted from www.maxwideman.com/papers/plcmodels/1990s.htm.)