agile user stories: objection #3

Agile suggests we stop talking about users and start talking about user roles. I will agree with the first part of the sentence: we definitely need to get away from talking about an elusive and generic user and be more specific, I am just not sure that user roles is the way to do it. Instead, I would argue we need to focus on behaviours not roles.  A user’s role in relation to a product or service may give us clues as to what they may want to with it, but it tells us nothing about how and why they may want to do it. User roles cannot effectively express goals, needs, attitudes, and behaviours. Enter personas, a proven tool to communicate those intangible, and subtle characteristics that will be the building blocks of a user centred and innovative solution. Personas offer an answer to the 'generic user' problem by helping focus the design to those who matter. Mike Cohn's objection is that Alan Cooper suggests we create only one persona, which is a slight misunderstanding; in fact you begin we a few personas and then narrow them down to a primary persona while you retain the others as secondary ones. Another problem with user roles is that they lend themselves to stereotyping.