Agile for Products, Agile for People: Building Software That Sticks

Product and software teams pride themselves on agile development and user-centered design. They talk to customers, gather insights, and iterate until they have something that solves real-world problems. It’s a proven process, and when done well, it results in products that people genuinely value. But when it comes to software designed for workflows within organizations, something often gets lost. This user-centered mindset frequently stops at the build phase, as if the act of deploying the software marks the finish line.

What happens next is all too familiar. The product is rolled out, and the employees who are supposed to use it daily are left to figure it out on their own. Adoption struggles follow. People resist, workarounds appear, and the organization is left wondering why no one is embracing the new system. Why aren’t they using it the way it was intended? Why is there so much resistance? The reality is that agile thinking and user-centered design can’t end with product creation. They need to carry through into how the product is adopted and integrated into the organization. This is where many projects fall short.

One of the biggest missed opportunities is co-creation at the final stages. Most organizational software is designed to align with theoretical workflows, but it often misses the mark when…