Salesforce Governance and Platform Enhancement Program
Organization Type
National nonprofit organization
Project Context
The organization needed stronger governance over Salesforce enhancements, technical requests, release management, user access, testing, documentation, prioritization, and stakeholder communication. A backlog of requests and inconsistent intake processes reduced transparency and made it difficult to manage competing priorities.
Project Objective
Establish a repeatable Salesforce governance and delivery model that would improve project intake, prioritization, testing, release readiness, stakeholder communication, technical reliability, and user adoption.
Role
Technical Project Manager
Scope
- Salesforce enhancement requests
- Full project lifecycle management
- Project intake and triage
- Backlog management
- Requirements gathering
- User stories and acceptance criteria
- Sprint and release coordination
- Risk and issue management
- User acceptance testing
- Sandbox and release governance
- Profile and permission testing
- Training and documentation
- Vendor coordination
- Stakeholder communications
Leadership Actions
- Developed a structured intake and triage process for Salesforce enhancement requests.
- Introduced project prioritization and service-level expectations based on urgency and business impact.
- Coordinated administrators, developers, data architects, operations leaders, vendors, and business stakeholders.
- Converted business needs into user stories, technical requirements, acceptance criteria, and test cases.
- Established recurring stakeholder and technical team communication cadences.
- Managed project risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and change requests.
- Developed user acceptance testing scripts and sign-off practices.
- Strengthened release planning, sandbox usage, profile testing, and permission validation.
- Improved documentation, training, and transition procedures.
- Supported backlog reduction and increased visibility into project status.
Challenges
- Inconsistent project intake
- Limited visibility into request status
- Competing stakeholder priorities
- Technical debt
- Backlogged enhancement requests
- Limited team capacity
- Need for stronger testing and release controls
- Stakeholder resistance to process standardization
Results
- Improved project intake transparency and prioritization
- Strengthened release readiness and UAT discipline
- Reduced uncertainty regarding request status and ownership
- Increased consistency in documentation and stakeholder communication
- Improved platform reliability and workflow automation
- Strengthened governance across business and technical teams
Capabilities Demonstrated
Salesforce project management, governance, backlog management, SDLC, Agile delivery, stakeholder communication, UAT, release management, vendor coordination, and process improvement.