Persona Usage in Software Development: Advantages and Obstacles

The Personas technique has been promoted as a strong tool for providing software developers with a better understanding of the prospective users of their software. This paper reports from a questionnaire survey regarding knowledge about Personas and their usage in software development companies. The questionnaire survey was conducted in a limited geographical area to establish the extent of Personas usage within all companies in the chosen region and determine whether software development companies used Personas during the development process. Several issues were identified as reasons for either not using the technique or for poor application of it. The study showed that 55% of the respondents had never heard about Personas. Among those who had heard about the Personas technique, the following obstacles towards usage of the technique were identified: Lack of knowledge of the technique, lack of resources (time and funding), Sparse descriptions - when applied and Personas not being integrated in the development. Keywords—Personas, software development, questionnaire survey, grounded theory