After Epic moved to quarterly releases, customer adoption of new features fell from 40% to 25%. What is the root cause?

Introduction

Epic has moved its software releases from roughly every 18 months to every three months, according to presenters at its 2026 user group meeting, with each quarterly release now carrying about as many enhancements as an old 18-month release. Epic also tracks how much of its recommended functionality customers turn on through its "Gold Stars" programme, and reported 35,000 Gold Star features turned on last year. The prompt: after the switch to quarterly releases, the share of new features that customers turn on within six months of release fell from 40% to 25%. What is the root cause? This is hard because the "users" are health system IT and clinical teams, and adoption depends on their capacity, governance and trust, not just on the software.

Step 1

Clarifying Questions (3 minutes)

• How is adoption measured?

• Hypothetical answer: The share of new optional features (not automatically on) that a customer enables within six months of having the release installed.
• Impact: The denominator grew a lot with faster releases.

• Has the number of features per year changed?

• Hypothetical answer: Yes; annual feature volume roughly doubled.

• Are all customer types affected equally?

• Hypothetical answer: Unknown.

• Is the drop in "features turned on" or in "share of features turned on"?

• Hypothetical answer: Absolute features turned on per customer rose slightly; the share fell.
• Impact: Customers are adopting more, but not keeping pace with supply.