How are FST decisions made?

There have been and will continue to be many decisions that we have to make as we move through Finance Strategic Transformation. Early in the project, we knew we would have to be careful about getting the right feedback from the right stakeholders, having the correct people making the decision, and correctly identifying the impact of the decision. As you can imagine, every choice we make along the FST road has an effect on a great many other people, processes, and systems.

To answer this need, the FST Team worked with our Governance groups (see our updated Governance groups here: https://financetransformation.virginia.edu/governance) and executive leadership to develop a decision making framework that involves three tiers of decisions. All FST decisions are made using the RAPID framework, but formal RAPID documentation (as you saw with the recent decision to go with Workday Expenses in place of our current expensing system, Chrome River) is only required with Tier 1 and Tier 2 decisions. You’ll always be able to access that documentation in the Online Community.

To sort decisions into the correct tier, we consider:

• Scope: whether or not the decision broadens or reduces the commitment of the type of work that will be completed on the project.
• Schedule: changes the schedule of the project go-live date or milestone
• Budget: changes the budget of the project, e.g., needs additional resourcing
• Impact on Stakeholders: Impacts a large group of stakeholders or has a high impact on current functionality.
• Policy: creates a new UVAFinance policy or involves a change to an existing policy

If the decision impacts one or more of the above considerations, it is a Tier 1 decision.

Tier 1 decisions require RAPID documentation: 

• Decide: Executive Committee / Leadership Council
• Agree: Functional Owners, depending on what the issue is
• Input: Advisory entities
• Recommend: Workstream Leads

If the decision does not impact one or more of the above considerations, it falls to the Functional Owner to decide whether or not they want to get formal input from advisory entities in order to make a decision. If yes, it is a Tier 2 decision.

Tier 2 decisions require RAPID documentation:

• Decide: Functional Owners
• Agree: Workstream Leads, depending on what the issue is
• Input: Advisory entities
• Recommend: Workstream Leads

If the decision does not require the Functional Owner to get formal input from advisory entities, it is a Tier 3 decision.

Tier 3 decisions do not require RAPID documentation:

• Decide: Functional Owners or Workstream Leads
• Input: Business Process Owner
• Recommend: Workstream Leads

In the spirit of transparency, we’ll share decisions in our normal communications channels when they are made – like here in the UVAFinance blog, as well as the Online Community and WFST. We’re also working on a user-friendly decision log that will live on the FST website and be consistently updated

Remember that we always want to hear from you if you have questions or concerns about decisions and their impact on your work. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions or concerns.