Henry Ford Health System

Compensation

Full Description

GENERAL SUMMARY: The Manager - IT Testing, Change, and Environment/Release is responsible for the day-to-day leadership, coordination, and operational execution across Epic testing, Epic-aligned change management, environment allocation, and release management. This role ensures safe, predictable, and high-quality delivery of Epic functionality while protecting system integrity, clinical operations, and organizational readiness. The Manager leads a combined team supporting testing (integrated and supporting other test types), Epic change coordination, and environment/release operations, and serves as a key operational partner to application teams, infrastructure, PMO, and enterprise IT governance groups. The role operates within established enterprise change and governance frameworks while providing Epic-specific expertise, coordination, and execution. The Manager serves as a 24x7 operational escalation point and drives continuous improvement through process discipline, metrics, and effective use of tooling. PRINCIPLE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: • Testing Leadership and Oversight • Oversees integrated Epic testing and ensures the team supports other testing types (application, unit, MRT, regression, etc.) as able. • Organizes, directs, and manages testing activities for Epic upgrades, Service Updates (SUs), enhancements, fixes, and major initiatives. • Coordinates testing activities across iterative releases, balancing test milestones with environment availability and release schedules. • Ensures testing deliverables, milestones, risks, and outcomes are clearly documented and communicated to stakeholders. • Assists with testing strategy across decentralized application teams, providing guidance, standards, and risk awareness. • Change Management (Epic-Aligned) • Oversees Epic-specific change coordination while aligning to enterprise IT change management and ITSM frameworks. • Serves as an active member of the Change Advisory Board (CAB), providing operational insight and advocating for Epic system integrity and readiness. • Partners with the central IT Change team to ensure changes are properly vetted, packaged, scheduled, and communicated. • Enforces appropriate change controls across production and non-production environments to protect test validity and operational stability. • Environment Management • • Plans, schedules, and controls deployment and utilization of all non-production Epic environments. • Balances project, enhancement, testing, and operational needs across shared environments while mitigating conflicts and risks. • Establishes and maintains clear purpose definitions for each environment in partnership with infrastructure and application teams. • Coordinates with infrastructure, access administration, and other IT partners to ensure environment readiness, availability, and appropriate access controls. • Maintains environment calendars, utilization views, and forward-looking capacity plans. • Release Management • Oversees Epic release management activities, including upgrades, enhancements, Special Updates, and fixes. • Maintains release integrity across non-production and production environments. • Identifies and communicates interdependencies, risks, and readiness concerns associated with releases. • Participates in operational readiness reviews and go/no-go discussions for Epic releases and major events. • Process Ownership, Governance, and Continuous Improvement • Serves as the process owner for Epic environment and release management tooling, calendars, and supporting workflows. • Develops, maintains, and enforces standard operating procedures, documentation, and audit trails across testing, change, environment, and release activities. • Chairs or facilitates governance forums such as the Environment Council to drive alignment, transparency, and decision-making. • Maintains compliance with SOC, CAB, ITIL/ITSM, regulatory, and Epic standards. • Captures operational signals, lessons learned, and metrics to drive continuous improvement and risk reduction. • Performs continual review of emerging AI, automation, and AIOps capabilities applicable to testing, change, environment, and release management; evaluates tools for risk reduction, efficiency, and scalability; and partners with enterprise teams to pilot or adopt appropriate solutions where value is demonstrated. • Operational Readiness and Escalation • Serves as a 24x7 operational escalation point for testing, change, environment, and release-related issues. • Manages escalation paths and coordination across application, infrastructure, vendor, and operational teams. • Supports readiness for Epic upgrades, go-lives, environment freezes, DR cutover/cutback events, and critical fix installs. • Financial and People Leadership • Supports budget planning and maintenance activities by providing operational inputs, utilization data, and forecasting insights (budget ownership retained at the Director level). • Provides direct leadership and coaching to a team of approximately five direct reports, including testing leads/analysts and change management resources. • Supports matrixed resources and prepares for future growth as scope expands. • Fosters a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE REQUIRED: • Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Healthcare Informatics, or a related field. • Minimum of five (5) years of experience in Epic or EMR testing, environment management, release management, and/or change coordination. • Minimum of two (2) years of prior management or supervisory experience. • Demonstrated experience operating within enterprise change management and ITSM frameworks. • Demonstrated experience partnering with operational support teams to review post go-live defects and incidents, analyze trends arising from incident tickets, and feed those learnings back into testing strategy, scope, and process improvement activities. • Practical working knowledge of automation, AI-assisted tooling, or productivity platforms used to scale testing, change, environment, or release activities without proportional increases in staffing (e.g., test automation, workflow automation, analytics, or AI-assisted planning and analysis). • Strong analytical, written, and verbal communication skills. • Proven ability to coordinate across technical, clinical, and operational stakeholders. CERTIFICATIONS/LICENSURES REQUIRED: • Epic certifications preferred, including Data Courier, HODs, or other environment related certifications/badges. • Certification or experience in SDLC, Release Management, Project Management, or ITIL preferred.