What is a Persona in TeamPulse?

Personas are fictitious characters created to represent the different user types of a system. Personas will help you visualize the people behind the keyboard using the features of the software your team is creating. You will can describe exactly how personas use your software by describing the interaction in a story.

When defining software requirements in the context of a persona (complete with a picture, a name, and a rich description of a personas goals, objectives, constraints, and day to day realities) teams can better define how to approach the design of the features the persona interacts with.

TeamPulse provides you with the ability to define and manage personas to help represent software specifications.

Personas in TeamPulse

There are two ways to work with personas in TeamPulse, from within the context of a story or by working with the persona definition directly.

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When defining a story, you can use the Quick Linking feature to help define the relationship of a story with a persona. Personas that you make reference to in the story description using Quick Linking are also listed in the list of personas associated with the story located under the Persona tab. Personas in the description text become hyperlinks that when clicked on will take you to the persona definition.

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As you can see, TeamPulse allows you to assign a picture to a persona (to easily associate the persona visually) as well as provide a name and objectives/descriptions. The Objectives area supports Quick Linking that you can use to make reference to new or existing stories.

Personas also list all associated stories, as well as describe their role in those stories. The default roles that TeamPulse provides to you are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed (however, you can easily add to this list by simply typing in a new role).

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TeamPulse can help your team take software specifications to the next level by capturing the personalities behind the keyboard.

As always, we’d love to know what you think of how we’ve addressed this feature in TeamPulse.