How do you present stakeholder personas and journey maps to your product team?

Presenting stakeholder personas and journey maps to the product team is a crucial step in the development process. I'll share some techniques I use: - Diving into Reality: Whenever possible, I involve the team directly in stakeholder interviews. Through experiencing these interactions, we foster empathy and gain a deeper understanding, which is essential for guiding the development of truly effective solutions. - Comprehensive Documentation: I believe in the importance of documenting every step. I use methods like Design Thinking, empathy maps, and thorough research to gather valuable insights about the personas.

Stakeholder Personas and Journey maps need not be technical in nature and should not be different for different audiences. Personas and Journeys are a tool for the audiences to understand for 'Whom' they are building and what are the pain points or gain points that the product would solve for. Its imperative for the product team to understand and comprehend these personas and journeys.

Context setting is the most important part and should be done before explaining the personas and journeys. I generally quote the discussions that I would have had earlier in order to prepare the personas and journey maps that helps the audience to understand the context pretty well.

A strategy I found effective, in addition to slide presentations, was to utilize visual tools such as Miro. These platforms offer the necessary flexibility to create interactive boards that vividly showcase each persona. By incorporating visual elements like photos, graphs, and icons, you can convey information in a more memorable and captivating manner. Furthermore, collaborative platforms like Miro enable the team to actively participate, delving into persona details in real time and fostering constructive discussions. It's a practical and dynamic way to ensure everyone comprehends and connects with the personas, enhancing the product development process even further.

Define the Journey, explain the scope of the journey. Present it in steps, go through each stage of the journey, highlighting the user's actions, emotions, pain points, and opportunities. You may also want to highlight the various touchpoints (web, app, support, etc.) and how the user interacts with them. Don't forget to address the Pain Points & Opportunities, emphasize areas where the user may experience challenges and potential solutions or opportunities to enhance the experience.

It would be good to add that PMs should always follow up on a given feedback, even if it means that they didnt move ahead with the proposal. This builds trust and reassure partucipants to be even more engaged next time.

Encourage Questions, After presenting each persona or journey map segment, pause for questions and seek feedback, ask the team for their impressions, thoughts, or if they see any gaps.

This is also very important, after presenting the personas and journey maps, generally the team needs time to digest and come up with their own feedback. hence a follow up call is needed in order to garner their impressions, gather feedback and then may be work on improvising the journeys better. in such meetings everyone should wear a hat of product manager.

My preference is to include the team during customer interviews to hear first-hand what's going on and allow them to get a sense of how we translate customer pains and goals into personas and journey maps. This helps the team buy-in to the persona development and provide input (and feedback) throughout the process. There should be no surprises when presenting a persona or journey map.

I consider it important to invite team to provide feedback and insights during the validation of both the problem and the solution, as a crucial step to ensure that our stakeholder personas and journey maps are aligned with reality. The diversity of perspectives enriches our understanding and helps us shape a more comprehensive vision.

Keep it simple. There's no need to overcook a persona. Your goal is to reinforce the connection between the team and your customers so when the team is developing the solution, they will approach it from the mindset of the customer (persona). One 'cheat' that can be used is picking a specific customer that everyone is across and pull the characteristics/demos from the customer.

In addition to the steps mentioned earlier, it's essential to keep an eye on evolving trends and technologies that could impact your stakeholders and their journey. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, understanding how emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and blockchain could reshape your stakeholders' interactions with your product can be a game-changer. Also, don't underestimate the power of ongoing feedback loops. Regularly revisiting and updating your stakeholder personas and journey maps based on real-time feedback and evolving insights will help keep your product strategy aligned with changing needs and expectations.