Who Uses Personas in Requirements Engineering: The Practitioners' Perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wang, Yi, Arora, Chetan, Liu, Xiao, Hoang, Thuong, Malhotra, Vasudha, Cheng, Ben, Grundy, John
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Wang, Yi
Arora, Chetan
Liu, Xiao
Hoang, Thuong
Malhotra, Vasudha
Cheng, Ben
Grundy, John
author_facet Wang, Yi
Arora, Chetan
Liu, Xiao
Hoang, Thuong
Malhotra, Vasudha
Cheng, Ben
Grundy, John
contents Personas are commonly used in software projects to gain a better understanding of end-users' needs. However, there is a limited understanding of their usage and effectiveness in practice. This paper presents the results of a two-step investigation, comprising interviews with 26 software developers, UI/UX designers, business analysts and product managers and a survey of 203 practitioners, aimed at shedding light on the current practices, methods and challenges of using personas in software development. Our findings reveal variations in the frequency and effectiveness of personas across different software projects and IT companies, the challenges practitioners face when using personas and the reasons for not using them at all. Furthermore, we investigate the coverage of human aspects in personas, often assumed to be a key feature of persona descriptions. Contrary to the general perception, our study shows that human aspects are often ignored for various reasons in personas or requirements engineering in general. Our study provides actionable insights for practitioners to overcome challenges in using personas during requirements engineering stages, and we identify areas for future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_15917
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Who Uses Personas in Requirements Engineering: The Practitioners' Perspective
Wang, Yi
Arora, Chetan
Liu, Xiao
Hoang, Thuong
Malhotra, Vasudha
Cheng, Ben
Grundy, John
Software Engineering
Personas are commonly used in software projects to gain a better understanding of end-users' needs. However, there is a limited understanding of their usage and effectiveness in practice. This paper presents the results of a two-step investigation, comprising interviews with 26 software developers, UI/UX designers, business analysts and product managers and a survey of 203 practitioners, aimed at shedding light on the current practices, methods and challenges of using personas in software development. Our findings reveal variations in the frequency and effectiveness of personas across different software projects and IT companies, the challenges practitioners face when using personas and the reasons for not using them at all. Furthermore, we investigate the coverage of human aspects in personas, often assumed to be a key feature of persona descriptions. Contrary to the general perception, our study shows that human aspects are often ignored for various reasons in personas or requirements engineering in general. Our study provides actionable insights for practitioners to overcome challenges in using personas during requirements engineering stages, and we identify areas for future research.
title Who Uses Personas in Requirements Engineering: The Practitioners' Perspective
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.15917