On the FST horizon: Configuration and Prototype

Contributed by Nicole Ferretti

In the last blog digest, I shared what’s around the bend now
that we’re wrapping up the Architect Sessions. 
Read
more about that here. 

I thought I'd share a little more detail today!

Generally speaking, we’re heading into a period beginning in the fall
called “Configuration & Prototype” where we will be taking the information
and decisions from the architect sessions and building our first instance of
Workday Financials.  

We’ve used the metaphor of “building a house” a lot with FST; with that in mind, it’s like the
architect sessions gave us the information to put together a blueprint for that
purpose. 

Following the build, we’ll have a fairly solid blueprint in
place (via the configuration workbooks), the really exciting part starts!  Using our house metaphor, this stage is
rather like the future residents of the house getting to take a walkthrough
the spec home – you get to see how things are set up, check out the fixtures,
get a feel for the flow, and make note of what you like and don’t like, what
will work and what won’t.

The project timeline has room for at least two prototype periods.  After the first round, we’ll use your
feedback to improve the system (to make changes to our house that make it more
functional for you) and then we’ll have you validate it again (time for another
walk-through!).  Because of our recent timeline
extension, we may even have time for a
third period of refinement and feedback.

When I visited with the Fiscal Administrators Group at their
June 17 meeting, I shared a couple of illustrations in my presentation
slides.  I thought they might be helpful
for everyone to see, so we’ve copied them here as well.  The key thing to remember about Configuration
& Prototype is that our end users will have an opportunity to provide input
that will guide the design. 

 

• What are “user stories”? 
  User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature in the system
  told from the perspective of the person who desires the capability, usually a user or customer of system.
  
• We use the term “playback” to refer to the visual review of
  the tenant by our stakeholders.  In
  effect, the playbacks are validation sessions.
• Remember that the “tenant” is our instance of Workday
  Financials here at UVA, and “configuration workbooks” are the blueprints for
  that tenant.