Waterfall Project Manager Simulation — Kaiser Permanente

The scenario

Kaiser Permanente is deploying Salesforce Health Cloud as the unified care coordination platform across 22 medical centers, 39 hospitals, and a member base of approximately 12.7 million. The platform will unify clinical data from Kaiser HealthConnect (Kaiser's Epic instance), claims and benefits data from the Health Plan side, and member self-service interactions into a single patient timeline. Care managers will work directly in Health Cloud for high-risk member outreach, intervention tracking, and case management; members will access a unified view of their care + benefits + claims through a redesigned kp.org portal experience. The project is one of three flagship deliverables under the Patient Experience Program — a multi-year strategic initiative sponsored by the SVP Care Coordination & Member Experience and chartered by the Health Plan board to address a 2024 internal study finding that high-risk members experienced fragmented outreach from 3-7 separate Kaiser systems. Salesforce Health Cloud is the rationalization layer that should replace the existing patchwork of regional CRM tools, member portals, and care-management spreadsheets. Four workstreams must converge on a single patient timeline by Day 27: (1) Salesforce Health Cloud core platform build; (2) HealthConnect / Epic bidirectional integration via FHIR R4; (3) Member self-service portal + kp.org SSO; (4) Care manager workflow design and change management. Each workstream has its own lead, its own technical complexity, and its own executive constituency. The PM owns coordination — keeping the workstreams aligned without micromanaging them, brokering dependencies, and presenting a unified governance picture to the steering committee. The program runs a waterfall methodology with five phases (Initiation Days 1-6, Planning Days 7-12, Execution Days 13-18, Closure Days 19-24, Wrap-up Days 25-27) and four phase gates at Days 6, 12, 18, and 24. Salesforce platform builds follow a sandbox → UAT → production promotion path with formal change advisory board approval required at each promotion.

What you'll do as the project manager

• →Deploy Salesforce Health Cloud to all 22 medical centers and 39 hospitals on a single Salesforce org, with FHIR R4 bidirectional integration to Kaiser HealthConnect
• →Onboard 4,800 care managers (across all 8 Kaiser regions) onto Health Cloud workflows with ≥ 70% sustained adoption at 90 days post-go-live
• →Launch the redesigned kp.org member portal with unified clinical + claims + benefits view to 100% of Kaiser members on go-live, with ≥ 60% logged-in member engagement within 60 days
• →Achieve HIPAA + 21st Century Cures Act compliance certification (joint internal audit + InfoSec sign-off) prior to go-live
• →Deliver against the $27.8M baseline with no more than 10% variance and within the 27-day implementation calendar (post-charter through go-live)

Project management skills you'll build

The challenges you'll navigate

• •Four workstreams converging on a single patient timeline by Day 27 — any single-workstream slip cascades into integration testing delays in Days 19-24
• •HealthConnect integration team (Dr. Bhattacharya) reports to Permanente Medical Group governance, NOT to the Patient Experience Program PMO — coordination authority is informal, not contractual
• •Care manager workflow design is still in flight as of Day 1 — Dr. Beauchamp's Northern California operations team has a working draft, but Southern California regional leads have not yet endorsed it
• •Contingency at $0.7M (2.5%) is below industry norm (5-10%) — the predecessor program manager committed to this number to win charter sign-off and any material risk realization will require a SteerCo budget supplemental
• •Accenture engagement is fixed-headcount T&M with cap; if any workstream slips, the SI cannot absorb additional consultants without a contract amendment that requires Health Plan CFO approval

Technology & stakeholders

You'll manage 7 stakeholders, including Dr. Joyce M. Edmonds-Park (SVP, Care Coordination & Member Experience), Hector Reyes-Manning (Director, Enterprise PMO — Patient Experience Program), Sundara "Sunny" Iyer (Principal Solutions Architect, Salesforce Health Cloud (Workstream Lead 1)), and more.

What you'll walk away with

A verified, shareable record of a completed enterprise project — plus the PMO deliverables you produced along the way (charter, project plan, SteerCo deck, closure document). It's real, demonstrable project management experience you can put on your resume and speak to in interviews.

Frequently asked questions

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