The team balanced two typical workstreams: New features being developed for the portal, driven by strategic initiatives; and new implementations onto the portal driven by business development in new states. The organization needed to manage multiple simultaneous projects in both workstreams. In addition to the complexity around the types of work, UHC also struggled with the numerous ways that notification of work bubbled up to the team. For instance, requiring a new feature could come from a product team or company leadership while implementation notification could come from a contract, an implementation project manager, or another team that saw a need to inform the portal team of an impact. Intake and ongoing management of projects were clearly a significant challenge.
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The challenge of working in UHC's enterprise environment is the sheer number of people and teams required to execute even a relatively simple task. Most projects involved a large amount of coordination between teams internal to UHC and/or external as third-party vendors. I played a pivotal role in these communication efforts by coordinating meetings and subsequent execution of multiple product teams in pursuit of the end result. Additionally, I played the role of gatekeeper, helping to ensure that all necessary documentation was created prior to engaging executional teams and, conversely, prioritizer, as requirements and deadlines constantly shifted.

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Although these accomplishments were important, my most important contributions to UHC were in the form of process. Process improvements fit into two categories: intake and execution.

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I revolutionized the member portal's intake process by moving the team from a haphazard Excel spreadsheet to a structured combination of an intake form and meeting. I instructed the team to ignore work requests that came via email and insisted that all stakeholders submit their requirements through the new form instead. This served several purposes: first, it standardized the information that the team took in, allowing them to ask relevant questions up front rather than engage in a game of email tag. If the submitter didn't know the answer to a question in the form, they had to go search for it before the requirement ever distracted my team. Second, it helped to ensure that the information was never lost as an email or chat message. Instead it was assigned a tracking ticket number and became trackable, and I could assign it to my team to make them accountable. Finally, the intake meeting offered an opportunity to on-board the team to new features, talking through requirements and ensuring that everyone was aligned. All of these initiatives made it more consistent to bring work to the team.

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I also improved execution by introducing a more agile based working environment. Whereas previously the team would expect to receive all requirements at the start of the project and see minimal changes through its duration, I introduced the expectation of change. While our intake form did ask for a number of details necessary to start the project, it also didn't require that everything be completely figured out at that point; it left room for flexibility. The reality is that change orders were a common occurrence, so by institutionalizing an expectation of change, I was making it more acceptable to make modifications as necessary while decreasing the team's stress level about these changes.

My time at UHC wrapped up when I had successfully implemented new processes that set the team up for success in the future. During two years of working with UHC, I managed the implementation of many features and markets. This includes features ranging from a new SSO with a third-party retail products benefit vendor to a fitness program that offered free gym memberships and markets such as Nebraska Heritage Health, Indiana HoosierConnect, and Hawaii Quest. Beyond that, the new processes ensure that the portal team is able to scale their operations as UnitedHealthcare continues to grow their offerings and add more new markets.