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.