Taking for granted

Since I'm leaving my current position, the product owner hat has been passed to another person and I have the chance to view the role from the outside. And this gives some new insight.

First: a product owner should never take for granted that he understand how other prioritizes or what other think is important. Especially a product owner who lacks actual business experience. It is so easy to believe that something is probably not that important and ignore it. But this is one of the worst errors you can do. The reasons are mainly two: first, you do not know and the only way to know is to ask - before you cut the stuff which do do not believe is important. Second: if you cut something stating it is not important without checking with the people who do know, you will loose their faith in you. It is easy to loose someones trust and rebuilding trust is very hard.

I think the core trait is thinking that you use the word 'believe' instead of 'know'. It is one thing to believe that something is not important, another to know something is not important. And the only way to move from believing to knowing is communication and getting knowledge. And don't forget that thinking agile is realizing that you never know, you just get less uncertain.