Bringing teams together to understand our users better
Persona alignment workshops help teams get on the same page about who our users actually are. Instead of working with assumptions or outdated knowledge, the workshop brings everyone into a shared space where we talk, map, and validate user roles, needs, behaviours, and motivations.
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This exercise is especially important in large product ecosystems where different teams interact with users differently. The workshop ensures that all of us are aligned before we start designing journeys, flows, or features.
Across multiple products, I noticed that teams often had fragmented or incomplete information about users. Some knew the super users well, some only knew operational staff, and some only interacted indirectly. This led to gaps in requirements, unclear priorities, and inconsistencies across features.
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A persona alignment workshop was the simplest and most effective way to:
• collect everyone's knowledge in one place
• validate assumptions
• identify gaps
• create updated, realistic personas
• bring the entire team to a shared understanding
Facilitating these workshops became one of my favourite things because they naturally bring people together. I’ve done these sessions for multiple products, and I always enjoy engaging stakeholders and drawing insights out of them.
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I’m usually the one leading the conversation, helping people open up, and keeping the room active. This helps us extract the right information about user needs and also helps me understand the product better from different perspectives.
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These sessions also end up being very good for team bonding. People who usually only talk in Jira or Teams chats finally sit together, discuss real problems, and build a shared understanding.
I’ve also attached an image from one of the Miro workshops I conducted earlier. I had created the template for that session, and it became a good reusable base for future workshops too.
People talk more when the environment feels comfortable
• Clear prompts help remove hesitation
• Cross-functional conversations reveal information that is otherwise never documented
• Teams align faster when personas are co-created, not handed over
• A simple template works better than a complex one
• The quality of the workshop directly affects the quality of the requirement gathering later
• Stakeholders enjoy visual exercises way more than long requirement meetings