Drive User Adoption Through Architecture Decisions

I’ve seen it more times than I can count: a worker filling out spreadsheets, using sticky notes and a shared inbox, with a tailored org open in the background, waiting silently. The system works. The automations fire. The integrations sync. And yet the users have quietly routed around every piece of it. Not because they don’t care, but because the org was never really built for the way they work. That gap doesn’t open at launch. It opens the moment I make my first architectural decision without asking how a real user will actually move through it: a required field added “just in case,” a page layout built for the edge case instead of the common one, a process that mirrors business logic but ignores the rhythm of someone’s actual day. Users never see the data model, the permission design, or the rollout plan. They feel them in every page, field, and step. The good news: you can close that gap before…