What is a persona, and how is it used in agile development?

Remember to research the difference between personas and actual users of a system if you are not familiar with this concept. Personas are hypothetical and represent the general lifestyle and work situation of a group of users within a system. They are not meant to be tied to a specific person.

A persona is a description of a hypothetical end-user of a product. It contains information about that user's role within the business, their demographic, what their work environment is like, and what their lifestyle might be like. For example, I may write a persona for an accounting manager if I am responsible for a system that has financial reporting functionality.

The goal of the persona is to help the development team think from the perspective of the end-user when designing and building solutions. Over time, it assists teams in making user-focused changes in feature usability that improve user satisfaction.