Personas are fictional characters that represent the ideal customers or users of a product or service. They help product teams understand and empathize with the needs, goals, and preferences of their target segments.
Personas can help define the features and benefit hypothesis of a product's strategic intent, which is the assumption that a certain set of features will deliver a specific benefit to the customers or users. By using personas, product teams can validate their feature and benefit hypothesis with real user feedback, and prioritize the features that deliver the most value and satisfaction to their personas.
References:
* Personas: This article from the Scaled Agile Framework explains the concept and purpose of personas, and how they can be used in a SAFe context to support customer-centricity, design thinking, and lean UX.
* Strategic Intent: This article from the Scaled Agile Framework defines the concept and components of strategic intent, and how it guides the portfolio vision, lean budget guardrails, and portfolio backlog.
* Feature and Benefit Hypothesis: This article from the Scaled Agile Framework describes the concept and process of feature and benefit hypothesis, and how it helps product teams test and validate their assumptions about customer value.