Persona and Channel Design review challenges

Before progressing into Authoring, Solution Designers should determine whether the Blueprint communicates a complete and coherent participant model.

When uncertainty exists, the objective is not to immediately refine individual design elements. Instead, identify the foundational decision creating the uncertainty and evaluate how that uncertainty affects ownership, access, experience, implementation scope, and participant outcomes.

The following review situations illustrate three common participant-design challenges in the Tour Booking application. Use the connected design question for each situation to evaluate whether the related design decisions support one coherent responsibility:

Tour Operator: connecting responsibility, work, access, and experience

Starting design

The Blueprint currently contains both Tour Operator and Operations User Personas. Their descriptions appear to represent the same operational responsibility, creating uncertainty about whether one Persona should exist or whether two genuinely different participant responsibilities are required.

Several Assignments route to Tour Operator, including routine preparation activities, customer clarifications, and specialist safety checks. However, the design does not yet explain when work should remain shared, when continuity with a particular user matters, or when additional qualifications are required.

The Tour Operator also has broad access to Tour Booking and participant information. Blueprint Preview demonstrates the participant experience through Assignments, Case views, navigation, and Home pages, but the design does not yet explain how these elements collectively support the business responsibility of the Tour Operator.

As a result, four connected questions remain open:

• Are Tour Operator and Operations User genuinely different Personas?
• Which work requires individual ownership versus shared ownership?
• Does the current access model reflect the complete responsibility?
• What participant foundation is required for import?

The following figure shows the key questions used to validate whether a participant represents a meaningful persona and to determine the operational and technical design implications of that decision:

Review approach

Rather than evaluating these questions independently, start with the participant responsibility.

Determine whether Tour Operator represents a complete operational responsibility and whether Operations User contributes any distinct business purpose. Then follow representative Assignments through ownership, qualification, continuity, access, and participant experience.

If the Persona definition changes, evaluate how that change affects routing, access, experience design, and import scope.

Refine the connected design

Where both Personas represent the same operational responsibility, consolidate them into a single Tour Operator Persona.

Keep routine preparation work available to the wider Tour Operations team while identifying specialist activities that require additional qualifications. Where continuity creates business value, preserve ownership with the participant already familiar with the booking.

Align Persona Case Access and Persona Data Access with the complete responsibility. Introduce contextual restrictions where Assignment ownership, Case Status, or data sensitivity changes the required level of access.

Use Blueprint Preview to validate the participant experience across current work, broader Case context, available Case Types, and responsibilities spanning multiple Cases.

Include Tour Operator in the current import scope because routed work, participant access, and Channel requirements depend on the Persona foundation.

The following figure shows how key design decisions support the import scope for the Tour Operator Persona:

Why this matters

A well-defined participant responsibility provides the foundation for every related design decision by establishing the participant's operational purpose, clarifying why the Persona exists, when it participates, and what outcomes it is accountable for. Separating authority from operational ownership creates a clearer participant model that makes ownership, qualifications, access, experience, routing, oversight, approval, and implementation decisions easier to evaluate because they can all be assessed against a single, consistently defined responsibility. This alignment also enables a coherent customer journey by connecting participation, access, and experience into a unified design that allows customers to perform legitimate actions efficiently while protecting information, maintaining appropriate governance, and supporting regulatory, security, and privacy requirements.

Review the complete participant design

Once individual participant journeys have been evaluated, bring them together into a single participant model.

The goal is to determine whether the Blueprint communicates a coherent design from business responsibility through work distribution, access, participant experience, implementation scope, and continued Authoring.

Review dimension	Completion test
Persona model	Each material participant has a confirmed responsibility and the appropriate Persona or Case participant relationship.
Operating model	Individual or shared ownership, qualification, continuity, and work-selection decisions enable eligible users and teams to perform the work.
Access model	Case Type and Data Object access supports legitimate pathways, with additional precision where context, data sensitivity, or customer rights require it.
Channel and experience	Each Channel supports a confirmed interaction need across the current Assignment, wider Case, available Case Types, and work across Cases.
Infinity foundation	The connected Infinity constructs and remaining Authoring refinements preserve the validated Blueprint intent.
Import evidence	The design explains why each Persona belongs in the current outcome and identifies the routing, access, Channel, and dependency evidence that informs the import decision.

The following figure shows the validation criteria used to confirm that a Blueprint design is complete, implementable, and supported by appropriate operational, access, channel, and import decisions:

A change to one foundational responsibility may affect routed work, ownership, access, Channels, experience requirements, implementation decisions, and import scope. Whenever a foundational participant decision changes, revisit the dependent design elements that rely on it.

Record stakeholder confirmation of the validated participant design and preserve the Blueprint version that represents the agreed baseline.

A participant-design review often produces numerous potential improvements. Not all refinements deliver equal value.

Experienced Solution Designers prioritize changes according to their effect on the connected design rather than their visibility within the Blueprint.

A local navigation improvement can be useful, but a clarification of participant responsibility can affect routing, access, experience, implementation scope, and delivery outcomes simultaneously.

The objective is therefore to identify and resolve foundational decisions first.

Decide where each finding progresses

Each review finding requires a different response, depending on whether the business intent is clear and where the remaining decision belongs. Use the following table to determine where each finding progresses:

The following figure shows the actions to take based on design review outcomes and validation findings:

Priorities across the connected design

Not all refinements deliver equal value, so prioritize the decisions with the greatest effect on the connected design. Use the following priority lenses, review questions, and Tour Booking examples to decide which refinements to resolve first:

Prioritization remains iterative. As one uncertainty is resolved, other findings can increase or decrease in significance. Continue to revisit dependent decisions while preserving design elements that already support their intended purpose.

Show the unresolved Tour Operator and Operations User overlap as the foundational decision. Connect it to dependent routing, qualification, access, experience, and import-scope decisions. Contrast these dependencies with a local navigation refinement that can progress later.

The following figure shows how persona design decisions made in Blueprint are represented and refined within the Personas step of Pega Blueprint:

Why this matters

Effective prioritization directs stakeholder attention toward the decisions that influence the greatest number of dependent design elements. Resolving foundational questions first creates a more stable basis for Blueprint refinement, import decisions, and continued Authoring.

Solution Designers review Persona and Channel Design through complete participant journeys rather than isolated design elements. They evaluate how participant responsibilities influence ownership, qualification requirements, access decisions, Channels, participant experiences, implementation foundations, and import scope.

A successful review produces a coherent participant model that enables legitimate work, protects information appropriately, supports validated interaction needs, and preserves business intent as the design moves from Blueprint into Pega Infinity. When foundational participant responsibilities change, revisit the dependent decisions that rely on them before progressing further into implementation.