Get Your Product Launch on Track: A Practical Guide to Agile

Featuring insights from Starlet Smith, Lead Agile Coach at Alliant Energy

Product development cycles are lengthening, increasing the risk of missing the mark with customers. In every conversation we have with CEOs and product managers, the same pain points surface: product development is behind, teams lack resources and face supply chain issues and lack timely customer insight. Looking to build resiliency and flexibility in your culture, and get the right products to market? It might be time to embrace an agile methodology for product launch. 

But organizations that successfully accelerate their product launch timelines share something in common: They have learned how to be agile, not just ”do agile”.

This distinction is at the center of our work in both change management and marketing strategy. It’s also a powerful theme in our recent conversation with Starlet Smith, Lead Agile Coach at Alliant Energy, who has supported major product and program launches.

Starlet Smith

Lead Agile Coach 

"We have had the true pleasure of working with Star Smith on a major client program, and are thrilled to share her bright light and most practical guidance to get your projects on track."

—Michele Nichols, President of Launch Team Inc.

Keep reading to see how an agile strategy, when paired with the right leadership and customer‑driven mindset, can transform a team’s ability to deliver.

Agile in a Nutshell: A Customer First, Feedback Driven Way of Working

As Star describes it, agile is fundamentally about working in small, iterative cycles to deliver value, get immediate customer feedback, and pivot as needed before investing too much in the wrong direction. Here’s how it works: 

1. Large projects are divided into smaller, deliverable assignments. 

2. Teams work on each part in short iterative cycles, aka “sprints.” 

3. At the end of each sprint, stakeholders can review and provide feedback. 

4. Then the team adapts the plan as needed and proceeds with the next sprint. 

This keeps the projects flexible and collaborative while producing higher quality work, faster. 

Although agile began in software, it’s a cultural shift and project management system that has proven ROI across industries, and is particularly relevant to the technology companies we work in.  

The core principle isn’t about the end product. It’s about the constant connection to customer needs.

“It's really focusing on like business agility, teams coming together, collaborating with your stakeholders and your customers, and at the end of the day,” Star said. “Working together to come to a solution that everybody's happy about.”

For CEOs, the payoffs are real:

• Faster time to market (20-50%)

• Improved productivity 15-25% and higher margins by avoiding unnecessary features

• Project ROI increases 15-35%

•  Defect rates drop 25-50%--improving customer loyalty and reducing costs

Doing Agile vs. Being Agile: Why Leadership Makes or Breaks a Product Launch

A common challenge we see while adopting agile is the tendency to “do agile”— checking boxes or forcing two‑week sprints without shifting the underlying mindset.

Star makes the distinction clear. Doing agile is about following the steps. Being agile is about showing up differently. 

It requires leaders to empower teams, shoulder the risk for their teams, and demonstrate a willingness to listen, be proven wrong, experiment, and occasionally pivot. 

Most importantly, being agile is always keeping the customer’s voice and feedback in mind. But that starts with leadership. 

When leaders shift from command and control to curiosity and enablement, teams become more engaged, more energized, and more capable of bringing products to market quicker and without friction. This is where change management intersects directly with product launch readiness — culture determines time to market.

One of the most impactful early habits we’ve seen is retrospective. This means regular conversations about what’s working, what isn’t, and what the team wants to try next, creating a cycle of continuous improvement. Even small adjustments compound quickly and help teams navigate the pressures of a demanding launch timeline.

Why Product Launches Struggle—and How Agile Resolves It

When we speak with CEOs, they often describe symptoms that appear unrelated:

• slipping launch dates

• tired and unmotivated teams

• competing priorities

• a loss of customer or market intelligence

But these are all intertwined. They arise when teams lack clarity, connection, and regular feedback. Agile, thoughtfully implemented, solves that. 

It restores focus, improves decision‑making, and creates the conditions for teams to operate confidently, even when uncertainty is high. It invites marketing and voice of the customer to the table from the start, ensuring alignment with customer demand and a faster, more targeted path to market. 

75.4% of agile projects succeeded, and 52% of business use it to accelerate time to market. When compared to the tradition waterfall method, 14% of waterfall projects end successfully without challenges, while 42% of agile-based projects succeed.

Streamline your agile product launch with our Product Launch Bundle.

The Limitations of Agile: Culture and AI 

For all its advantages, agile isn’t effortless to adopt. Even in organizations that recognize the need for faster product launches and more collaborative cultures, the path to agility is often blocked by cultural and emerging tech barriers, including the rapid rise of AI.

One of the biggest obstacles is organizational culture. Agile requires transparency, frequent communication, and a willingness to admit when an assumption is wrong. But many companies still operate with deeply ingrained habits: 

•  information moves slowly

• decisions happen at the top

• teams are rewarded for individual output rather than shared outcomes

The barrier Star often sees firsthand: too much focus on process, not enough on people. 

Many teams start by implementing tools like Jira or Trello, or by jumping into sprints before they’ve built trust or clarified how they want to work together. When the cultural groundwork is missing, agile feels like another layer of work rather than a more effective way of delivering value. 

The rise of AI tools adds a new layer of complexity. While AI has the potential to accelerate backlog refinement, automate routine tasks, and improve forecasting, it can also create confusion or amplify existing disorganization. 

The recent State of Agile report shows that while 61% of teams in 2026 are prepared to responsibly adopt AI into agile, only 39% have clear guardrails for how AI will be used. 

When AI is treated as a shortcut instead of a complement to human collaboration, it can create misalignment, degrade quality, or speed up the wrong work. 

If Your Product Launches Are Slowing Down, It’s Time to Reassess.

Star ended our conversation with a simple truth:

“If people don’t know why Agile matters, it won’t work. The why has to be about the people.”

When people feel connected, supported, and informed, they deliver stronger outcomes, and they do it with more passion, ownership, and consistency. If your organization is experiencing longer product cycles, increasing burnout, or declining customer understanding, agile may be the strategic reset you need.

Practical tips to getting started

• Pick a pilot project

• Educate yourself so that you can be the strong executive sponsor the team needs

• Team reading and discussion to make it applicable for you: Read Scrum by Jeff Sutherland

• Templates in a low-cost tool that can scale with you: Try Trello

• Establish ways of work and team norms—resetting expectations for how the team will communicate and collaborate

• Set the rhythm for standups and debriefs

Need help with becoming agile? 

Our early involvement in product launch, voice of the customer and market research and marketing strategy, coupled with our expertise in change management and project management, can model agile and elevate your team’s capabilities. Learn more about how we can improve product launch results.