What To Do When Adoption of an Internal Tool/Process Stalls

You’ve paid for that product license. JIRA Align. Copilot. ChatGPT. Maestro. Pendo. Gong. ServiceNow. Snowflake. Cascade. Monday. Clickup.

(Engineering|Product|Rev|Whatever) Ops. IT. Take your pick.

OKRs. Scrum. Agile. SAFe. Force Mgmt. The latest framework/process you’re deploying.

Now you’re trying to maximize the usage of that product/process. You want to show ROI.

You create playbooks of what to do. You train everyone on it (an early warning sign is when getting people into training feels like herding cats)

At some point in the conversations to discuss the adoption of the new product you feel nobody’s there with you. It’s like that video of the dancing guy…
but nobody joins :-(

It’s like you’ve “Built it” and nobody’s coming.

What’s going on?

Here’s the thing - Deploying a product or process internally is like developing a product.

Yes, that product is already developed. The features/capabilities are all there, ready for your internal users to use.

But the fact that a feature is there doesn’t mean people want to use it.

It doesn’t mean they WILL use it. Even if you ask. And especially if you tell…

So what do you do?

See yourself as responsible for maximizing value. Not for adopting a tool. Figure out what problems to help your users with. What outcomes to focus on.

If managing the adoption of an internal product/process is like managing a product…

What can IT/Ops leaders responsible for organizations focused on deploying/adopting these products/processes learn from product management?