Role Description

The Application Lead is primarily responsible for providing day-to-day leadership to the functional team for all core activities pertaining to the planning and execution of projects related to the application build, implementation, and support. The Application Lead is responsible for the overall design and development of the application and is required to gain in-depth knowledge of the application and software. The Application Lead is expected to be knowledgeable about organizational policies, procedures and business operations, as well as the area of business they are representing and the functionality available in the application(s). The Application Lead will communicate with vendor installation team, review the software, analyze business operations, work with vendors and end-users to tailor the system to the organization, and participate in the pilot training of end-users (as needed). This role will participate in current state mapping and future state workflows development, application design and development, testing support, issues resolution application integration, implementation and ongoing support activities. The Application Lead will identify and manage resistance to change as related to their respective application of responsibility.

Qualifications

Required:

• Minimum: Associate’s degree with six or more years of relevant work experience
• Strong assertiveness skills and ability to manage conflict in a variety of situations.
• Superior organizational and people management skills
• Demonstrated ability to align and motivate key process stakeholders, including nurses, physicians, and other clinical/administrative staff
• Demonstrated ability to interact with multidisciplinary teams

Preferred:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent years of relevant work experience
• 6+ years prior system build experience
• 3+ years of relevant experience functioning in a leadership capacity with leading teams and workgroups

Licenses and Certifications:

1. Minimum: Certification in specified application as applicable;
2. Applicant is expected to maintain certification as current by completing New Version Training (NVT), as applicable.
3. For certain clinical applications, clinical licensure is preferred and may be required as specified in Job Aid.

Key Competencies

• Adaptability/flexibility: demonstrating flexibility with respect to changing end-user business needs
• Critical thinking: the ability and willingness to see things in an open-minded way and examine an idea or concept from as many angles as possible
• Dependability: the ability and willingness to take ownership of work activities and ensure that they are completed in an accurate, efficient, and timely manner. Must be detail-oriented with strong organizational skills and able to function effectively in a fast-paced environment and meet deadlines
• Initiative: the ability and willingness to recognize assignments or tasks that need to be completed, to seek out additional assignments or tasks, and to help others
• Interpersonal skills: the ability to communicate information clearly and concisely with project leadership and subject matter experts; the ability to gain trust and establish effective relationships with Epic counterparts
• Learning: the ability and willingness to learn new software and systems
• Listening: listening attentively to ensure that the intended message has been accurately received, holding responses until the person has finished making their point, and repeating information to ensure accuracy
• Problem solving seeking, logically examining, and interpreting information from different sources to determine a problem's cause and developing a course of action to resolve the problem and to prevent its recurrence
• Resilience: the ability to persevere in difficult situations, overcome obstacles, and reach high levels of performance when faced with stressful work situations and time pressures

Responsibilities

The Application Lead is primarily responsible for providing day-to-day leadership to the functional team for all core activities pertaining to the planning and execution of projects related to the application build, implementation, and support. In addition to the duties discussed in the Role Description, the Application Lead is responsible for the following:

Defining Systems Requirements:

• Collaborating to understand and execute the application architecture and integration
• Serving as a business unit expert to set the direction for the organization's workflows by attending site visits, validation sessions, and other integrated sessions
• Investigating end-user requirements and needs, applying potential solutions and pressure-testing solutions using an agile method
• Analyzing data conversion needs
• Preparing details of specifications as needed
• Achieving in-depth knowledge of the software and serving as a bridge between end-users and vendor implementation staff
• Understanding choices in application specifications
• Assessing implementation strategies and the impact those strategies will have on workflows and operations
• Analyzing new functionality in new releases to determine whether or how it should be used
• Documenting current and new workflows and understanding how workflow decisions translate to application configurations
• Performing in-depth analyses of workflows, data collection, report details, and other technical issues associated with the use of the software

Project Leadership:

• Serving as a liaison between end-user’s workflow needs and implementation staff
• Maintaining regular communication with vendor representatives, including participating in weekly project team meetings
• Working with vendor representatives, RWJBH’s business community, and end-users to ensure the system meets RWJBH’s business needs in regard to the project deliverables and timeline
• Responding to vendor's technical questions
• Maintaining rules for how each new version is released
• Communicating regularly with other Application Leads to resolve issues, conflicts and application integrations
• Communicating changes to workflows to Principal Trainers
• Ensuring that appropriate subject matter experts are involved in design, configuration and testing sessions
• Holding weekly communications with team members to discuss the status of deliverables, shared issues, end-user concerns, budget, and upcoming milestones
• Working in conjunction with manager to provide feedback for team member performance

Issue Resolution and Project Management:

• Identifying issues that arise in the application area as well as issues that impact other application teams and working to resolve them. This also involves working closely with the technical support on issues of install choices, master file and category list set up, synonyms and preference lists, etc.
• Managing and executing identified mitigation plans
• Coordinating test plans and new systems, complying with version upgrades and system modifications
• Reviewing the status of projects and issues on an ongoing basis with leadership, which includes the creation of status reports
• Demonstrating self-direction and ability to manage integrated project deliveries
• Supervising basic issues and roadblocks, escalating issues as needed
• Provides recommendations based on industry best practice
• Plans Project and workgroup build activity oversight, assures quick escalation of build decision incompatibilities and risks
• Develops future state materials
• Collaborates with team members across the department as well as operational staff
• Supporting application governance needs, including development of business case for decisions
• Maintaining version control of workflows, issues/risks log, and decisions tracker
• Communicating with leaders to determine necessary escalations

Executing Application Build:

• Facilitating the development of integrated workflows by working closely with the project team, subject matter experts and technical leads to define processes that cross applications and functional areas
• Guiding workflow design, building and testing the system, and analyzing other technical issues associated with Epic software
• Identifying and implementing requested changes to the system and general system enhancement needs
• Assisting in the building of new data sets and testing of new functionality
• Developing and documenting internal procedures that will be used in conjunction with the applications
• Prioritizing and implementing changes requested for the system
• Coordinating software updates and changes with users
• Working with users on the sharing of data, category lists, etc.
• Setting standards for naming and numbering conventions and security classifications
• Reviewing new vendor software releases and updates to help determine which features will be utilized
• Assisting and supporting training teams with necessary build, content, and documentation, as needed