The Use of Personas
Personas are fictional characters that the Product Owner defines in detail to represent the characteristics and behaviours of different users. The purpose of these personas is to get a thorough understanding of what each user is trying to achieve when using the product that is being developed. These are then used within the user stories to clearly define who the requirement is referring to and what goal they are aiming to accomplish when using the feature being described.
Tracking Epics
Aside from having the initial benefit of allowing the broad capture of the requirement in the early stages, the grouping together of multiple user stories into epics has another advantage that comes into play later on, when the items within the epic begin to be placed into sprints and then completed and delivered.
While developers and the Scrum team will mostly be concerned with user stories at the most granular level, the Product Owner as well as managers and other stakeholders will tend to be interested in when the epic will be delivered as a whole, since it is only after this phase is complete that the full business value will be achieved. Because of this, many of the agile management tools that are available have the ability to roll up the progress of the child user stories into the epic, and therefore give visibility and allow interested parties to monitor and measure the evolution of the product.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: