Group

To replace "our users" with a group small enough to disagree about. A target group that nobody could object to is a target group that will not change any decision you make.

Teams reach for this when a roadmap has started serving everybody. The value is not the description, it is the exclusion: naming who this is not for is what makes the remaining decisions obvious.

Describe behaviour before demographics. What they are trying to do, how often, what they use today and what they would have to give up to switch. Age and job title come last and often do not come at all.

Then write the people you are deliberately not serving, and why. If that list is empty, the group is too wide. Finish by naming two real people who fit, ideally ones you could call. A group you cannot find an example of is a guess with a nice layout.

The classic is a persona with a name, a stock photograph and a paragraph of invented hobbies. It reads as research, it was produced in a workshop, and it will be quoted in decisions for two years without anybody asking where it came from.

The quieter failure is a group defined by who is willing to pay rather than by who has the problem. Those overlap early and separate later, usually at the point where you are building for one buyer and calling it a market. Write the behaviour that defines the group, then check whether your last five customers actually share it.