TABLE OF CONTENTS Giving people the wrong information at the wrong time is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig.
adapted from Paul Dickson
You have likely been planning and creating personas for a little while now. Unless you started your persona work well before this new product cycle began, the rest of your organization has not been sitting still, waiting for the fruits of your efforts to enlighten them. Instead, they are well on their way to defining a product, perhaps even starting to build it already. You may have been regularly asked if you are done yet: We need those target user definitions yesterday!
Overall, by this time, the product team is beginning to settle into their work. People are more confident in what they are tasked to do and they are beginning to do it. As such, each team member is getting focused on his or her own responsibilities.
The executive staff is has provided at least a draft of the high-level direction and vision for the product. By including members of the executive staff in reviews of the provisional target users in the last lifecycle phase ( conception and gestation), you helped them get clarity on their own thinking related to target audience. They are now in the process of defining the product schedule more accurately.
The product and project managers are busy defining requirements, determining...
