Nothing is obvious...

once upon a time there was a feature...

Recently we had hot discussion with product owner about one of the feature, that we are implementing right now. But let me start from the beggining.

What is feature about? Configure application through GUI.
Right now everything is in config file and configuration process isn't not as easy for our customers as it should be. That's why we decide to do first step to change it - first move the configuration of the most critical and important things.
After few conversations when PO explain what needs to be done, we created prototype to show him how it will look like. And that was it...

presentation time

PO told us, that we completely don't understand application, absolutely no knowledge how it works and what needs to be defined to run it. We should look at the product like a customer!
We missed few configuration options, he continued, which also needs to be moved and it should be obvious for us!

STOP!

Let's sum up few things:

• Developer cannot think like a customer. It's not possible. Why? Because his knowledge is different, application for him is something different and no matter how hard he will try - he won't be never able to look at the product in the same way as customer.
• There is nothing obvious until you won't tell it loud and clear. Same as I cannot assume that PO knows, what I know until I won't tell him this, he cannot assume that team members knows what is in his mind. There should be no place for interpretation.

"stop" once again

For me, it was clear, that next time we need to focus more on definition of done to avoid situation like this. We shouldn't spent our time on arguing or being upset, we should learn from this experience and move on.
Everyone agreed and we asked PO, what should be really done, what is missed, what was interpreted in wrong way?
Unfortunately answer wasn't as we expected, because we heard, that everything is already in config file and we should know which options are important and all of them needs to be moved.

Once again, STOP!

But this time it was clear for me that further discussion won't bring any value and it will be just waste of time.

no obvious things, no interpretation

Next day we showed prototype once again.
This time also it wasn't what PO expected, but whenever he claimed that option shouldn't be here, we told him why we think, that our customer can consider it as important.

There was no more arguing this time.
He agreed that next time we need to try harder with eliminating "obvious" things and places, which are allowing for interpretation.