That's more of a failure for the ux and product vision than it is a failure of project management. The trick isn't to just roll out new changes slowly, but to involve the users and figure out what needs to change and how.
That really depends on your customers and the product. In this case, control systems, incremental changes are definitely not the way to go. Imagine if your car made an incremental change to the position of the brake pedal every time you turned it on. In such situations you don't babystep. You announce the change ahead of time, provide your customers with transition training, and make the change as scheduled.
In the case of "adaptive" menus in control systems, imagine if the elevator in your building rearranged its floor buttons so that the most requested floors were always at the top. Total chaos. People learn where their button is on day one. After that ANY change is going to go badly no matter what the UI engineers say. That UI should be carved in stone for the life of the building.
Were there any dedicated UX people involved? To me, a UI engineer is someone who works exclusively on the front end, and would implement the work of the UX designer. They wouldn't actually do the designing and research themselves.
This is one of those cases where that Ford quote about a faster horse is relevant. Many people will be happy to just have what they have now without thinking how it could be better.
