This powerful customer descriptive technique is fundamental for POA Practitioners to understand the wants, needs, desires, and aspirations of their target customers. It will lead to better problem definition and solution design. Personas challenge ideas and assumptions so that the team can make more effective strategic product decisions.

POA practitioners typically lead the effort to create personas. Leading the effort does not mean that they do all the work. On the contrary, they incorporate:

• Direct customers and user observation,
• Interviews,
• Workshops with market trends,
• Data analytics, and
• Other research and discovery activities.

There is something magical that happens when personas are created. A customer or user becomes "Shay the shoe-buyer" or "Sarah the Sales Representative" or "Rachel the Realtor," enabling the team to relate to them more easily. For many teams, personas become so real that the team refers to the persona name instead of the role during discussions. A Product Owner may hear, "How will Rachel be able to access property comparison data quickly and accurately?" Passion and purpose are ignited within the team to build better solutions when customers become real people and the team is better able to empathize with their customers.

POA Practitioners help guide the team on what information to gather, and how to go about it. They contribute to determining what level of detail is required and how to ask questions that reveal deeper insights.

POA Practitioners engage the team with personas by:

• Having the team create personal personas or a team persona. This a good exercise to get the team to understand the concept and to build team spirit, as well as to make them accessible and visible.
• Inviting the team to contribute to the elements in the persona canvas.
•  Demonstrating use of WH questions, Johari window, and the 5 Why's to gain deeper or targeted insights. (See 10.40 Root Cause Analysis in BABOK® V3)
• Facilitating a session with the team to create customer personas based on what is known and assumed, then validate with actual customers. Insights, gaps, and assumptions will be revealed.
• Making the personas visible. Store them in a shared space where everyone can view and collaborate. Bring them up during user story discussions.
• Keeping personas current. Add to them if new or useful information is uncovered.
• Using personas to plan market and data analytics work and to develop meaningful metrics.

Personas bring to life experiences, preferences, personal and professional interests, and challenges. They reveal assumptions and values that may have been missed. They emphasize the importance of building relationships with customers or users and are an effective tool for POA Practitioners.

POA Domain	Personas
Applying Foundational Concepts	To establish the right target market for customers, personas need to be studied for the formulation of baseline product strategies.
Cultivate Customer Intimacy	Personas drive customer intimacy. For a persona to be real and an archetype of the customer group, the POA Practitioner needs to have a deeper understanding of the customer so that the perceptions and assumptions are validated by the customers themselves
Engage the Whole Team	To build relevant personas for the product, the POA Practitioner and the team need to participate, including the customer who can validate the persona the best.
Make an Impact	With personas, the description of requirements become relatable stories. The team starts to empathize and think like the persona as the challenges become personal. This motivates the product team and that creates products that solve real needs.
Deliver Often	Personas are constantly updated during product development. Some motivation and attitudes of a persona are static, and some change based on circumstance. For example, after a product is released customers may change their opinions of certain features. This is reflected in their personas for future reference and better- aligned products.
Learn Fast	Learning about and deciding which personas to prioritize for product features requires significant analysis. The characteristics of a persona need research through meaningful metrics and analysis. The relevant evidence and data points must be chosen with care to craft useful personas.
Obsess About Value	Personas centre the product value on the customer, and the product team can validate the perceived value against the feedback of the actual customer. A repetition of value delivery and the value realization against a persona ensures the right features are being built for the product.