From Organic Growth to Enterprise-Wide Adoption: DHCS’ Atlassian Success Story

The Situation

The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) manages one of the most complex public healthcare programs in the nation.

Within DHCS, the Medi-Cal Enterprise Systems Modernization (MESMD) team successfully leveraged Jira Software and Confluence Cloud for agile software development and work management. Their success sparked an interest in expanding the Atlassian suite agency-wide to improve project visibility, collaboration, and scalability.

Before scaling, DHCS needed to ensure:

• Access and permission structures aligned with security policies and could scale across the agency.
• Standardized project templates to support both technical and business teams with varied methodologies (scrum, waterfall, hybrid).
• Comprehensive onboarding and training to enable new users to quickly adopt Atlassian tools with minimal disruption.

To support this transformation, DHCS partnered with Oxalis, an Atlassian expert with deep experience in public sector project management, governance, and I

The Challenge:

DHCS faced key obstacles in expanding Atlassian adoption and project standardization:

• Inconsistent permission structures – With multiple teams and external contractors, DHCS required a standardized permission model to protect sensitive data while allowing seamless collaboration.
• Lack of structured onboarding – Many teams lacked experience with Atlassian tools, requiring custom training and process guidance.
• Disjointed project methodologies – Teams followed varied project management styles, making it difficult to standardize reporting and governance.
• Limited visibility into project portfolios – Leadership struggled to gain a unified view of project progress and resource allocation.

Oxalis’s Approach

Oxalis designed and executed a scalable, structured approach to Atlassian adoption across DHCS.

1. Standardizing Permissions and Security

• Developed and implemented a unified permission scheme, ensuring consistent user access controls for employees and contractors.
• Aligned permission structures with DHCS security policies, ensuring compliance and minimizing risk exposure.

2. Enhancing Training and Onboarding

• Created customized training materials, including documentation and instructor-led sessions.
• Onboarded over 500 users across 75 projects and five divisions, ensuring consistent tool adoption.
• Provided role-based training tailored to both technical and business teams using scrum, hybrid, or waterfall methodologies.

3.Establishing Project Templates and Best Practices

• Designed structured project templates to standardize workflows and enable rapid project setup.
• Implemented enterprise-level reporting structures, allowing leadership to track project health across the organization.
• Integrated portfolio-based reporting, ensuring all projects rolled up into a common enterprise hierarchy.

4.Fostering a Community of Practice

• Created a Community of Practice to support collaboration, knowledge sharing, and best practices across project teams.
• Provided post-implementation support to refine workflows, optimize configurations, and reduce technical debt.
• Developed a Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Maturity Model, charting a roadmap for continuous improvement.

The Outcome

With Oxalis’ expertise, DHCS successfully scaled its Atlassian Cloud implementation, resulting in:

• 500+ users onboarded across 75 projects, accelerating agency-wide adoption.
• Improved security and governance, with standardized permission models ensuring data integrity and controlled access.
• Greater project visibility, with enterprise-wide reporting allowing leadership to track progress and resource allocation.
• Faster onboarding and reduced time-to-value, ensuring new users and projects can begin using Atlassian tools quickly and efficiently.
• A structured approach to PPM maturity, providing a clear path for ongoing improvements and scalability.