Workday testing ramps up this month

WorkCyte team members are gearing up to run scenarios specific to Iowa State's financial, payroll and human capital management processes. It's the next step in the testing phase for the Workday software platform that's been configured for ISU and will go live July 1, 2019.

End-to-end testing will put the Workday system through the actions required for day-to-day processes. Test scenarios will vary, many with multiple actions required.

"We're basically writing the story of all the actions and tasks that are taking place, trying to anticipate those day-to-day activities and test them against the system built for Iowa State," Kristen Constant, interim vice president and chief information officer.

The scenarios will take processes from start to finish and include variations. For example, different steps may be required to hire merit, faculty, staff and student employees. And what steps are needed for employees who retire or leave ISU?

"All of those end-to-end lifecycle processes are what we'll test over the next few months," Constant said.

Other common processes include:

  • Purchasing and ordering
  • Vacation and sick leave
  • Travel and expense reimbursements
  • Research grant management
  • Payroll and benefits management
  • Tax reporting
  • New employee onboarding

Team effort

About 130 ISU employees will be involved in the end-to-end testing that begins Aug. 20, with completion by the end of November. Constant said the WorkCyte team will log issues, work to resolve them and then retest until all the wrinkles are ironed out.

"There's a tremendous amount of work being done," she said. "This broad end-to-end testing covers all of the functionality we'll go live with."

Once the overall end-to-end testing is done, the WorkCyte team will turn its focus in December to payroll -- comparison testing of the Workday and current systems.

"This payroll parallel testing confirms that the new system produces payroll accurately," Constant said.