HR/Payroll Modernization Program Post-Implementation Review · 2018-07-24 · HR/Payroll Modernization Program Post-Implementation Review . INFORMATION . The administration and the

F–8 STANDING COMMITTEES Finance and Asset Management Committee

F–8/211-17 11/9/17

HR/Payroll Modernization Program Post-Implementation Review INFORMATION The administration and the Finance and Asset Management Committee are presenting this information to provide an overview of the HR/Payroll Modernization program, including the implementation of Workday and subsequent program close-out. This item is for information only. BACKGROUND The Human Resources/Payroll Modernization (HRPM) program was the largest administrative transformation effort in the University of Washington’s history. It was a multi-year initiative to replace the University’s 35-year-old legacy payroll system with a modern, integrated system to manage human resources and payroll functions, which are essential to supporting the UW’s large and diverse workforce and for future growth. The new system was designed to significantly improve compliance, reduce risk, provide better data for decision making, and increase standardization and best practices across the institution. After extensive preparations, including developing a wide-range of testing, training, University engagement, and a thorough mitigation and contingency plan, the UW successfully transitioned from multiple legacy systems to Workday on June 27, 2017. Simultaneously, a new Integrated Service Center (ISC) opened in the UW Tower to provide ongoing Workday transactional support for employees university-wide. As part of State oversight, the University of Washington is required to provide the Washington State Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) with an end-of-project report. That final report, along with the findings from two outside consultants, are attached. Key findings from these reports, as well as a discussion of stabilization of Workday, will be presented at the meeting. Attachments 1. OCIO: Final Report, November 2017 2. Bluecrane: Quality Assurance Lessons Learned Report, September 2017 3. Deloitte: HRP Lessons Learned, July 2017

UW HRPM Post Implementation Project Close Out 1

University of Washington’s Human Resources/Payroll

Modernization Program

Final Report November 1, 2017

ATTACHMENT 1 F-8.1/211-17 11/9/17


Table of Contents

1 Project Summary .................................................................................................... 3

1.1 HRPM Program – At a Glance .......................................................................................................... 3

1.2 Initial Business Problem to be Solved ............................................................................................ 3

1.3 Solution to the Business Problem .................................................................................................. 3

1.4 Business Value .................................................................................................................................. 4

1.5 Investment Justification ................................................................................................................... 5

1.6 Final Costs ......................................................................................................................................... 6

1.7 Schedule ............................................................................................................................................ 6

2 Project Management Approach ............................................................................. 7

2.1 Experienced Project Manager .......................................................................................................... 7

2.2 Executive Management Support ..................................................................................................... 7

2.3 Quality Assurance / Independent Verification and Validation...................................................... 8

3 Project Performance ............................................................................................... 8

3.1 Methodology and Scope Management ........................................................................................... 8

3.2 Business User Involvement ............................................................................................................. 9

3.3 Investment Impact on Other Governmental Organizations .......................................................... 9

3.4 Risk Management .............................................................................................................................. 9

4 Lessons Learned .................................................................................................. 11

4.1 Lessons Learned Information ........................................................................................................ 11

4.2 Lesson Learned Themes ................................................................................................................ 13

4.3 Conclusion Summary ..................................................................................................................... 13

5 Contact Information .............................................................................................. 13

5.1 Project Contacts .............................................................................................................................. 13

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Project Summary: UW’s Human Resources/Payroll Modernization Program

1 Project Summary

1.1 HRPM Program – At a Glance

The Human Resources/Payroll Modernization (HRPM) program was the largest administrative transformation effort in the University of Washington’s history. It was a multi-year initiative to replace the University’s 35-year-old legacy payroll system with a modern, integrated system to manage human resources and payroll functions, which are essential to supporting the UW’s large and diverse workforce and for future growth. The new system was designed to significantly improve compliance, reduce risk, provide better data for decision making, and increase standardization and best practices across the institution. The Board of Regents approved the program in February 2014, and the University selected Workday as its new human resources and payroll system. This program was the first step in a larger strategy to modernize the University’s administrative infrastructure. In May 2016, the Board of Regents approved additional funding and an extension of the launch date for the new Workday system to summer 2017. After extensive preparations, including developing a wide range of testing, training, campus engagement, and a thorough mitigation and contingency plan, the HRPM program successfully transitioned from multiple legacy systems to Workday on June 27. Simultaneously, a new Integrated Service Center (ISC) opened in the UW Tower to provide ongoing Workday transactional support for employees on all three campuses and the Medical Centers.

1.2 Initial Business Problem to be Solved

The University of Washington (UW) was using a 35-year old mainframe legacy payroll system, to process payroll for a workforce of more than 40,000 people, including faculty, researchers, clinical personnel, students, and administrative staff. The University is one of the largest employers in the state, but was operating on a system, Higher Education Payroll Personnel System (HEPPS), that was implemented in 1982. The HEPPS payroll system was insufficient to support the University's business needs, as it was not configurable, difficult to modify to meet changing regulatory requirements, and relied on a handful of staff that were nearing retirement. In addition, the UW supplemented functionality gaps in HEPPS through the use of shadow systems and manual processes to mitigate risk. However, significant risks remained in ensuring regulatory compliance in employee benefits, time and leave, workforce complexity and payroll.

1.3 Solution to the Business Problem

The University selected Workday as an integrated solution for its payroll and human resource management. Workday delivers human capital management, financial management, and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest organizations. Hundreds of companies, ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises, have selected Workday. Other higher education institutions implementing its software include Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, New York University, University of Southern California, University of Texas - Austin, and Yale. Workday provides integrated functionality for workforce management, staffing, compensation and benefits, employee relations (including faculty management and tenure tracking), employee development, administering labor relations, time and leave, and payroll. It represents the first large-scale Software as a Service (SaaS) program that the University has undertaken for its core administrative business systems. Under the SaaS model, software is licensed, hosted, and maintained by a third-party, and capabilities are typically added with periodic releases.

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1.4 Business Value

The HR/Payroll Modernization program worked with key stakeholders to identify strategic value in a number of key areas. Once fully stabilized, Workday is expected to produce productivity gains throughout UW units and across all three campuses, strengthen the UW's regulatory compliance, and deliver better data and business intelligence for decision making. Examples of capabilities Workday will provide, when fully stabilized, to aid in controls and management of resources include: Transforming and Streamlining HR/Payroll Business Processes

The Software as a service (SaaS) distribution model, in which Workday hosts a wide range of unified solutions and makes them available by subscription to the UW over the Internet, simplifies technology while enabling the automation of critical business processes. Through the UW’s Workday system, human resources (HR), payroll, and benefits data are integrated into a single system; data is validated at the time it is entered, minimizing corrections and reducing benefit administration errors. Ease of use by the UW employees will encourage and increase self-service by reducing paper timesheets and providing quick access to basic personnel information, such as pay slips and leave balances. Employees will make personal information updates to their contact information, direct deposit selections, and W-2 withholdings. Online benefits enrollment will reduce paperwork errors due to manual processing, while automated onboarding of new hires will provide an improved and consistent employee experience, including notification of benefits deadlines. Workday facilitates one-stop data entry into the system, which can be accessed by all authorized users according to their security roles. Improving Compliance and Reducing Risk

Workday provides improved insights and control that will strengthen regulatory compliance, including to state and national data privacy laws. For UW Medical Centers employees, Workday systematically tracks licenses, certifications, skills, education, and other credentials. Workday will enhance UW’s accountability through auditable business process workflows, improved reporting, and transparency. Compliance risks will be minimized by automating workforce management processes and eliminating manual interpretation of pay rules around rates, hours worked, and overtime. The system will reduce payroll overpayments and eliminate Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) risks associated with manual calculations. Providing Better Data for Decision Making and Delivering Efficiencies Across the Institution

By design, Workday brings together HR/payroll applications with UW faculty, staff, and student worker data, and integrates them as a unified whole. This will produce real-time actionable analytics and increase reporting effectiveness; data is more accessible and of higher quality. Data-driven decision making will be improved. Workday’s reporting and analytics infrastructure will enable the UW to leverage benchmark data to address business challenges and tie HR decisions and strategies to overall business objectives. The UW will be better positioned to deploy leading-edge HR capabilities required for growth. Streamlined performance tracking and reporting will support improved recruiting and retention of employees.

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1.5 Investment Justification

Market Analysis

After an extensive competitive solicitation process, the UW selected Workday as the provider for the new SaaS Human Resource and Payroll system. The SaaS model is more cost effective, with the delivery of functionality occurring over time, with limited customization. This model requires standardization of business processes across the University, and the continual need to improve these processes with each software release. This first implementation of a SaaS program at the UW creates a framework for continuous improvement that will enable the University to successfully integrate new technology in the future. By creating a framework for change and technology implementation now, the University is laying the foundation for future administrative modernization efforts. Alignment to the State Enterprise-based Strategy

No other State of Washington agencies use Workday. UW's contract with Workday includes provisions for other institutions and the State to contract for their own Workday solutions. Relationship to State’s Technology Infrastructure

This investment is independent of the State's technology infrastructure. The new HR/Payroll System is hosted by the software vendor, in accordance with technical requirements specified in the RFP. Relationship to CTS Product or Services Offerings

Not applicable - no comparable products or services available. Proposed Exceptions to OCIO Policies and Technical Standards

Not applicable.

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1.6 Final Costs

The implementation phase of this project was completed within the revised budget approved by the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) in May 2016. Final Costs for Implementation

Original

February 2014

Budget

Revised

May 2016

Budget

Actual

Expense Variance

Implementation Costs

Vendor Implementation* 27,879,000 33,728,789 $35,499,776 ($1,770,987)

Project Team Implementation 29,586,000 27,489,486 $24,595,350 $2,894,135

Contracted Services 0 10,066,634 $11,189,782 ($1,123,148)

Implementation SubTotal 57,465,000 71,284,909 $71,284,909 $0

Contingency 10,000,000 4,000,000 $313,713 $3,686,287

Total Implementation 67,465,000 75,284,909 $71,598,622 $3,686,287

Cost of Issuance** 610,669 610,669 $275,800 $334,869

Grand Total*** 68,075,669 75,895,578 $71,874,422 $4,021,156 * Actuals include $1.1M in outstanding milestone payments to Workday, expected December 2017 ** An estimate is provide for the Cost of Issuance for debt expected in January 2018 *** The ~$4M to be used to support stabilization

Project Funding The UW is debt financing the majority of the cost to implement the new HR/Payroll system, with remaining costs funded from the University Operating Budget. Long-term debt will be issued using a 10-year term and funded with departmental operating funds. Maintenance Funding All ongoing operating costs will be paid with University operating resources, including cost sharing with University units. This includes the direct cost of operating the new system and vendor subscription fees.

1.7 Schedule

The Board of Regents approved the program in February 2014, and it officially started in March 2014. On May 12, 2016 the UW Board of Regents approved an additional $7.8 million for the program budget and extended the timeline for launch with an additional 6 months to summer 2017. The program successfully launched Workday on June 27, 2017. Extending the HR/Payroll Modernization program launch date allowed additional time to thoroughly review, validate and test the new system design, complete business process design work, and engage the University community in an integrated change management effort to better prepare them for the changes the new system and business processes would bring. In its final report to the UW, independent

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QA firm Bluecrane commended the University for “having the courage…to take a ‘pause’ and conduct a deep and thorough reassessment of the program when significant problems were being encountered.”

Procurement Schedule

Milestone Start Date Completion Date

Release RFP September 2012 Sign Contract February 2014

Implementation Schedule

Milestone Start Date Completion Date

Project Start Date March 2014 Initial Development/Configuration March 2014 August 2015 Redesign/Design Validation January 2016 November 2016 Testing November 2016 May 2017 Project Deployment June 2017 Project Closure Summer 2017 September 2017

2 Project Management Approach

In the fall of 2015, the University paused the program to conduct a reassessment. At that time, a new consulting partner was selected (Huron Consulting Group) and the Program Management Office (PMO) was created. The new PMO provided a unified approach and coordinated leadership that brought together all seven related projects and enabled a focus on both technology and people-readiness. The PMO was headed by an Executive Program Director, Deputy Program Director, and Program Change Director. The PMO structure allowed for better oversight across all aspects of the program, and ensured a unified approach to risk identification, management and mitigation, and better transparency and accountability. The program used a single set of performance metrics across all projects to continually monitor status, risks and issues. These unified processes provided improved visibility into program status. To ensure appropriate support for the program, significant resources were deployed from other University units. These resources were strategically selected to support key areas of the program essential for its success, including project management, change management, instructional design, and operations support. This structure delivered better support to the UW community in preparing for the transition to the new Workday system.

2.1 Experienced Project Manager

The HR/Payroll Modernization program hired a new Executive Program Director, Aubrey Fulmer, in November 2015. Fulmer is a recognized leader in the implementation and operational support of Human Resources, Benefits and Payroll systems in the Higher Education and Healthcare. She came to the University with extensive experience, including successful implementations of Workday's Human Capital Management/Payroll suite at the University of Chicago and at Carnegie Mellon University.

2.2 Executive Management Support

The HRPM maintained strong support from key executives across the University, starting with Senior Vice President V’Ella Warren. When Warren retired in July of 2015, Kelli Trosvig, Vice President for UW Information Technology and CIO, became the project’s new Lead Executive Sponsor. Following her departure from the University in late 2016, Dave Anderson, Executive Director for Health Sciences Administration and standing executive sponsor, filled this role. Also at this time, Aaron Powell, Interim Vice President for UW Information Technology and CIO stepped in as an Executive Sponsor. Other

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Executive Sponsors included UW executives responsible for the business areas most impacted by the system change, and were rotated in and out through the duration of the program. The Executive Sponsors were responsible for program oversight and key decision making. This group met twice monthly to make decisions on program scope, direction and outstanding issues. In addition, the Executive Sponsors represented the program to the Office of the Chief Information Officer and Technology Services Board for the State of Washington, as well as provided regular updates to the University’s senior leadership.

2.3 Quality Assurance / Independent Verification and Validation

Quality assurance (QA) was a significant focus of the program, with the University engaging an external consulting company, Bluecrane Inc., to provide independent QA. The firm was responsible for monitoring program progress, identifying risks, and making recommendations for mitigations, as well as providing regular QA reports to the Executive Sponsors. After the program reset, the University asked Bluecrane to intensify these efforts in order to increase accountability and to ensure the program remained on track. In addition, most of Bluecrane’s recommendations were implemented, improving the program’s approach and success. In accordance with the OCIO QA policy, the HRPM program responded to all Bluecrane QA recommendations. These recommendations and responses were reported at the State's monthly Executive Steering committee, and were included in the program's Monthly Status report. This was posted on the OCIO Transparency Dashboard, which the program updated with current status reports and other requested materials.

3 Project Performance

3.1 Methodology and Scope Management

The program’s project management methodology followed the Project Management Body of Knowledge standards for Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing. Activities were tracked in a work breakdown structure, with critical path and resource management. As part of the UW's Feasibility Study, the University defined core and non-core business capabilities for the HR/Payroll system functionality. Core capabilities were defined as those required to accurately process payroll and included:

Position management and HR organization structures Payroll Compensation management Benefits administration Labor distribution Time and leave Appointee/employee records

Non-core capabilities (defined as not required to support payroll) included:

Recruiting and hiring Training and development Employee relations Labor relations Position budgeting

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The UW is implementing the HR/Payroll system in phases, with the core capabilities implemented in the first phase. The UW will determine the timing and scope of non-core functionality based on institutional priorities, cost, and risk, as well as vendor product maturity.

3.2 Business User Involvement

The HRPM program relied on an extensive outreach effort involving business users across the University. Executive Sponsors

The Executive Sponsors included University business leaders whose units were most impacted by the new system. The Executive Sponsors and Program Management Office conducted regular meetings with key stakeholders across the University, as well as the Board of Regents, Board of Deans and Chancellors, Faculty Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting, President's Cabinet, UW Administrators Council, and IT Governance Boards. HR/Payroll Modernization Change Network

This group was comprised of key business leaders in academic and administrative units across the University. The program met with this group monthly to discuss program progress and emerging issues, and to provide a regular and ongoing forum for dialogue and input. In the final months leading up to go-live, the monthly meetings were expanded to include liaisons from academic and administrative unit change management teams, further broadening engagement. Key Business Owners

Early on, the program involved key business owners (those whose work was expected to be most impacted by the new system) in reviewing and validating the draft design of the new Workday system. Once business and key campus partners completed this review, the rest of the University community was engaged through an integrated change management process. This helped prepare the UW for implementation of the new Workday system. Labor Relations The HRPM program maintained a close working relationship with UW's labor relations team. This collaborative effort included exchanging information on current relationships and bargaining opportunities, as well as sharing updates on design decisions and business process changes necessitated by the transition to Workday. These meetings provided an informative, productive forum for discussion and input. In turn, the labor relations team provided regular program updates to all labor representatives. The labor relations team was therefore able to conduct contract negotiations with a majority of the bargaining units in May 2016 and discuss specific issues associated with the transition to Workday, and the related creation of the ISC. In order to mitigate risk, the program retained external counsel to support work with collective bargaining units at the UW.

3.3 Investment Impact on Other Governmental Organizations

The investment in the new HR/Payroll system is enhancing the University's ability to share better quality data with other government agency systems, including the State Employee/Compensation Modeling System, Department of Retirement Systems, Health Care Authority, and the Salary Projection System. There are no other known direct impacts to other governmental organizations.

3.4 Risk Management

The program involved substantial systems, organizational, and business process changes that affected the University's major administrative units, including UW Information Technology, UW Payroll Office, Human Resources, Academic Personnel, UW Medicine, as well as University and department business operations. The University conducted a project risk assessment in the summer of 2012 and developed a formal risk management plan.

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In the fall of 2015, under new program leadership, the risk management process was refreshed with new tools, processes, and reports. Risks were formally reviewed at least monthly with Executive Sponsors as a part of the Program Dashboard status reporting process. In this process, each mitigation strategy was documented to minimize risk. The risk management process continued to be refined throughout the program, and was highlighted by Bluecrane as a significant strength. In addition to standard project risks (e.g., budget, schedule, scope, executive sponsorship, etc.), the following risks were anticipated for the final stretch of the program. Mitigation activities were in place (detailed below), and the program remained on track.

Risk: UW users and subject matter experts could not dedicate sufficient time to the program to refine requirements, participate in business process redesign, test and validate the new system, and attend training

Mitigation: o Secured support from UW Leadership to allow staff time to attend HR/P trainings and

work on the change management effort o Leveraged the HR/Payroll Modernization Change Network of several hundred members

to participate in change management activities and to promote campus engagement o Empowered program team members and business owners to make decisions and to

know when to escalate, increasing efficiencies o Leveraged weekly touchpoints with business owners to ensure the design reviews stayed

on track

Risk: Lack of standardization and failure to optimize business processes across units due to the highly decentralized nature of UW's HR/Payroll operations

Mitigation:

o Secured support from UW leadership for standardizing HR/Payroll business processes across the University

o Leveraged the HR/Payroll Modernization Change Network to promote business process changes in their units/departments

o Leveraged weekly touchpoints with business owners to communicate business process changes

o Redesigned end-to-end business processes for entire program, with the goal of standardizing as much as possible

Risk: Integration of the new HR/Payroll system with other University systems does not function

correctly, including with current legacy administrative systems Mitigation:

o Redesigned end-to-end business processes for entire program, with the goal of standardizing as much as possible; this enabled easier integration

o Optimized how downstream systems integrated with Workday by developing a robust data model in an Enterprise Integration Platform

Risk: Inability to accurately and efficiently map legacy data sources to the new HR/Payroll

system Mitigation:

o Documented legacy data sources to target accurate mapping in a data dictionary, enabling business owner signoff

o Updated data conversion strategy for cross-program awareness and signoff

Risk: UW's ability to support the new technology and business processes post go-live would be limited in the absence of a structured HR/Payroll shared services delivery model

Mitigation:

o Implemented Integrated Service Center to enable high quality service delivery

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Risk: The new system's success depended upon a major cultural shift at the University from

individualized solutions and diverse approaches to standardized business processes Mitigation:

o Implemented a robust Integrated Change Management plan to promote acceptance of standardized business processes across the University. This included a team of more than a dozen staff to execute the plan

o Secured support from UW leadership for standardizing HR/Payroll business processes across the University

o Built a sense of ownership by regular reporting to University stakeholders To further mitigate the above risks, the University also leveraged Workday's formal methodology and implementation best practices.

4 Lessons Learned

4.1 Lessons Learned Information

The University is undertaking several business transformations, with the HRPM program laying the groundwork for these future efforts. With this in mind, the University has carefully evaluated lessons learned from the HRPM program, including from our own internal review, as well as from Bluecrane, Inc. and Deloitte LLP (attached). Deloitte was engaged by the UW Finance Transformation program, which is the next modernization effort for the UW. The following table represents an overview of the University’s lessons learned, and also reflects some of the main findings from Deloitte and Bluecrane:

Knowledge Area

What Worked What Didn't Work

Staffing 1. Engaging staff across the University to leverage existing campus employees and their relationships, enabling change.

2. Creating pods (smaller working groups dedicated to a particular area of subject matter expertise).

3. Two-in-a-box approach: Pairing a UW employee with a Huron consultant in leadership roles, resulting in knowledge transfer and collaborative, agile problem solving.

1. Initially, too much focus was placed on systems and processes, not on people. This impacted the project approach. There should have been a people-focused change management approach from the start.

2. Pods should have included a change manager, and a training team should have been involved from the beginning.

3. Hiring employees as a project-appointment rather than a permanent position led to job insecurity and stress. This created significant issues with retention as go-live approached.

4. Insufficient resourcing for the Integrated Service Center during the initial period of stabilization resulted in a significant backlog of customer tickets and increased reliance on consultants.

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Knowledge Area

What Worked What Didn't Work

Change Management

1. Change Managers and their collaborative relationships with UW units were critical to the success of the program.

2. Mobile Support Units (MSU), often staffed by change managers and technical/applications experts, were incredibly valuable post-go-live.

1. Change management team should have been better staffed to support the effort.

2. MSUs should have been deployed earlier to help units manage their change instead of waiting for after go-live.

3. Communication with UW unit leadership was inadequate, and more should have been done to build a fundamental understanding of the significant shift Workday would bring to business processes.

Design 1. After the reset, the program developed a viable design, committed to it, and then drove towards a go-live date.

1. Continuing to respond to requests for changes instead of finalizing the design, negatively impacted the program’s ability to share a formalized plan with customers in a timely manner. Know when a design is good enough to share.

Project Management

1. Unified HR/P related projects into a single program, managed under the PMO, enabling use of common tools, templates, and better integrated design and testing.

2. Established a Program Enablement Office to manage the program plan, support the tools/templates, and to enforce compliance.

1. Prior to the reset, the absence of program management initially resulted in partial or inaccurate information being used by leadership and Executive Sponsors to make decisions regarding the health of the program.

2. Delay in joining integrations and reporting teams with functional pods led to preventable issues.

Vendor Solicitation and Selection

1. Selecting a consultant with experience in system implementation within higher education.

1. Having software vendor also act as the lead on system implementation (SI) work prevented UW from selecting the SI firm that best understood the product, higher education, and the UW.

Training 1. Providing customized training, including classroom, lecture, and recorded video delivery options developed by role.

2. Including a post training assessment in training for key departmental roles ensured successful completion.

1. Due to delays in finalizing the design in some areas, the training window was compressed prior to go-live.

2. Relying too heavily on a simulated environment to accomplish the experiential aspect of training was insufficient versus allowing time to actually work in the Workday system.

Project Reset 1. Don’t be afraid to hit the pause button and reassess if the project is not going as planned.

1. Timing of the launch date/day of Workday was challenging, as it occurred just as a significant portion of the staff was going on summer break, and fiscal year end added a layer of complexity.

2. Launching the ISC at the same time as Workday, instead of earlier, was unavoidable but not optimal.

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4.2 Lesson Learned Themes

The following major themes emerged from the lessons learned: After the program reset, the approach to implementation and the structure of the program team

were sound Ensuring alignment between scope and budget, with full-loading of budget elements, should be

paramount While the reset gave the program time to pilot a design process across the University, the UW

should have approached the design from an end-to-end perspective and involved more customers in the overall design details from the beginning

The University should have prioritized and invested in the role of change management earlier There is significant value in conducting a prototype test that includes user acceptance earlier in

the process, enabling opportunities to refine and subsequently develop a stronger final product

4.3 Conclusion Summary

In conclusion, the launch of Workday at the University of Washington was successful, and is now considered a model implementation for higher education, even with some on-going challenges. Several other institutions have sought guidance from program leadership at the UW. Following the reset and under strong leadership, project objectives were achieved on-time and within budget. The valuable lessons learned from this program will pave the way for successful implementations for the future.

5 Contact Information

5.1 Project Contacts

For more information about the information or artifacts in this report, please contact the following:

Aaron Powell

Interim VP for UW Information Technology and CIO

University of Washington UW Information Technology 206.685.2676

[email protected] Dave Anderson

Lead Executive Sponsor and Executive Director for Health Sciences Administration

University of Washington Health Sciences Administration 206.543.7202 [email protected]

Ryan McHugh

Deputy Director of HRPM program and Partner at Huron Consulting Group, Inc.

Huron Consulting Group, Inc. 773.319.8213 [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]



Quality Assurance

Lessons Learned

Report for the

University of Washington

HR/Payroll

Modernization Project

September 2017

Prepared by

Bluecrane, Inc.

®

bluecrane

Management Consulting

for

State and Local

Governments

Quality Assurance

Executive Advisement

Project Oversight

Project Management

Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V)

Risk Reduction

ATTACHMENT 2F-8.2/211-17 11/9/17

Page 1 of 55

Corporate Headquarters 210 Avenue I, Suite E

Redondo Beach, CA 90277-5608

www.bluecranesolutions.com 310-792-6241

September 8, 2017 Mr. Dave Anderson Executive Sponsor, HR/Payroll Modernization Project Executive Director, Health Sciences Administration, University of Washington Magnuson Health Sciences Center Box 356355 1959 NE Pacific St., C-414 Seattle, WA 98195 Dear Mr. Anderson:

The attached report is bluecrane’s compilation of “Lessons Learned” from the University of Washington’s (UW) Human Resources (HR)/Payroll Modernization Project and is the final QA report for the project.

Please contact me with any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Allen Mills

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Page 2 of 55

http://www.bluecranesolutions.com/

®

UW HR/P Program Lessons Learned Report

Bluecrane, Inc.

September 2017 Page i

Table of Contents

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................... 3 2. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 5 3. THEMES OF SUCCESS ..................................................................................................... 6

3.1. UW’s Commitment to Modernizing Administrative Operations .................................. 6 3.2. Courage to Embark on Redesign ............................................................................. 7 3.3. Practical Approach to Redesign Effort ...................................................................... 8 3.4. Excellent Use of Tools .............................................................................................. 8 3.5. Well Managed Testing Effort .................................................................................... 9 3.6. Setting Priorities Helped ........................................................................................... 9 3.7. Dedication of Staff, Managers, and Executive Leadership ........................................ 9

4. CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE FUTURE PROJECTS .......................................................10 4.1. Commit to a Comprehensive Approach for Change Management ...........................13 4.2. Adopt Employment Sustainability Practices for Project Staffing ...............................14 4.3. Start Major Organizational Changes During Project Planning ..................................15 4.4. Select an Experienced and Knowledgeable Implementer ........................................16 4.5. Include Comprehensive Stabilization Deliverables ..................................................17 4.6. Avoid Just-In-Time Delivery of “Plans” .....................................................................18 4.7. Spend Time Refining and Clarifying Roles, Responsibilities, Expectations, Authorities, and Duties .......................................................................................................18 4.8. Require and Enforce Transparency into Project’s Activities .....................................19

5. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................19 APPENDIX A. PROGRAM BACKGROUND .............................................................................20 APPENDIX B. RISKS AND ISSUES RAISED BY QA OVER THE LIFE OF THE HR/P PROGRAM ...............................................................................................................................24 APPENDIX C: OVERVIEW OF BLUECRANE APPROACH ....................................................51

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®


Bluecrane, Inc.

September 2017 Page ii

Table of Figures

FIGURE 1. HR/P PROGRAM SUCCESS THEMES .............................................................................. 6 FIGURE 2. CONSIDERATIONS FOR UW’S FUTURE MODERNIZATION PROJECTS BY PROJECT LIFECYCLE

PHASE ................................................................................................................................13 FIGURE 3. GENERAL TIME PERIODS OF THE PROJECT LIFECYCLE PHASES OF UW’S HR/P PROGRAM

..........................................................................................................................................20

Table of Tables

TABLE 1. DEFINITION AND ACTIVITIES OF PROJECT LIFECYCLE PHASES .........................................10 TABLE 2. SIGNIFICANT/MAJOR PROGRAM EVENTS IN THE LIFECYCLE OF THE HR/P PROGRAM ........20 TABLE 3. QA RISKS IDENTIFIED DURING THE LIFE OF THE HR/P PROGRAM ....................................24 TABLE 4. QA RISKS IDENTIFIED DURING UW’S HR/P PROGRAM ....................................................27

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September 2017 Page 3

1. Executive Summary On June 27, 2017, the University of Washington (UW) went live with its first modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, Workday’s Human Resources/Payroll (HR/P) system. This was a tremendous accomplishment for the University and a significant achievement for the team of managers and staff who were responsible for UW’s HR/P Program. We wish to commend UW’s President and her team of dedicated executives, managers, and staff for having the tenacity, fortitude, and persistence to maintain a strong and unwavering commitment to making UW’s first major modernization effort such a success. In looking back over these last several years, we believe there were a number of factors or “themes” that contributed to the Program’s success. These “themes of success” began with UW’s fundamental commitment to modernizing its administrative operations and were followed by:

UW having the courage, in the last half of 2015, to take a “pause” and conduct a deep and thorough reassessment of the program when significant problems were being encountered.

Once that pause period was completed and the decision to continue moving forward with the HR/P Program was made, UW embarked on an extensive redesign effort that was both practical and reasonable and which ultimately resulted in a working modern HR/P system for the University.

As a result of that reassessment, the Program put in place an excellent set of “tools” (i.e.,

measures, tracking and monitoring methods, performance dashboards, repositories) for managing and reporting on the program’s activities. This use of tools increased the transparency into what was happening on the Program by a hundred fold, and, for the first time, allowed everyone–including ourselves–to better understand what was occurring in the Program’s various activities.

In addition, the Program Leadership Team (PLT) completely redesigned and re-planned its

approach to testing. Even though this testing re-planning effort took some time to develop, it was much better and more consistent with industry best practices than the prior approach to testing. In addition, the testing team itself was exceptional in its leadership and the use of management techniques and methods. Overall, during the eight months of intense testing activities, we found that the testing team was consistently well organized, repeatedly engaged in good communications practices, and did an exceptional job in managing each cycle and phase of the Program’s testing activities.

Also, the HR/P Program consistently used prioritization in almost every area of its activities.

For example, we usually recommend that agencies focus their limited testing resources on those test cases that are the most critical to business operations or that will likely be the most frequently used by the end users. In our experience, we have seen very few public sector organizations prioritize their test cases in such a manner. Yet, UW did; and not only in testing but in almost every other area of the Program’s activities. This consistent use of prioritization, we believe, was another contributing factor to the Program’s success and its ability to meet its various time commitments.

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The final factor, or what we feel is the over-arching theme to the Program’s success, was

the dedication and commitment of the staff, managers, and entire UW Executive Leadership Team that we believe directly led to the Program’s success. Many individuals throughout the University contributed their time, expertise, and knowledge to the HR/P Program. They worked long hours, deferred time off, went above and beyond what was required of them, and dedicated themselves to helping make UW’s new Workday system possible.

Even though UW’s HR/P Program can, and should, be considered a successful endeavor, we do have a number of considerations that UW may want to include in its next modernization effort. Specifically, we recommend that UW:

Expect and require a comprehensive approach to its next project’s change management component

Adopt a number of specific employment sustainability practices for the staffing on its next modernization project

Start any major organizational changes as early as possible in the project’s lifecycle in order to avoid disruptions or distractions later on in the project’s activities

Select an experienced and knowledgeable implementer in UW’s selected ERP software and one that is able to clearly demonstrate deep knowledge of Higher Ed administrative operations

Include comprehensive stabilization deliverables in future implementer RFPs and contracts

Avoid just-in-time delivery of “plans” in order to give UW and its future vendor partners adequate time to discuss and refine elements of those plans

Spend time refining and clarifying roles, responsibilities, expectations, authorities, and duties to better meet expectations on future projects

Require and enforce transparency into future projects’ activities by using the HR/P Program as an example

In the end, we believe that UW’s HR/P Program was an unqualified success and has greatly moved UW forward on its quest for modern administrative services and operations. It was a great undertaking by the University and UW’s President and her team of dedicated executives, managers, and staff, and they should all be congratulated for a job well done!

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2. Introduction

Over the last four years, we, at Bluecrane, Inc. (“bluecrane”), have been providing Quality Assurance (QA) services for UW’s HR/P Program. From July – November, 2013, we participated in UW’s Implementation Planning Study (IPS), offering observations and recommendations on the on-going procurement activities and performing an analysis of the risks in the project’s risk log. From December 2013 to July 2017, we provided formal monthly QA reports that raised a total of 30 unique risks in 44 monthly reports spanning the life of the HR/P Program. In looking back over the reports and our various interactions with UW and the HR/P Program, for a number of years, we found that:

The first risk we identified (in 2013) related to staffing

The last risk we identified (in 2107) also related to staffing

Governance risks were identified early in the Program’s lifecycle and some of our last discussions with UW also related to governance

Testing experienced the highest number of risks over the life of the project but the risks were resolved once: (1) a “best practice”-based testing approach was put in place, (2) a method and a tool for capturing traceability were implemented, and (3) a fully resource-loaded schedule was approved

The vast majority of the risks were identified when the reset and pause began in July 2015 and continued throughout the remainder of the Program. In our view, this increased reporting of risks was not necessarily because the risks increased (when the pause and reset began) but was more related to the increased transparency, improved project reporting, the consistent exercise of good communications practices, the recognition that risk identification is a positive factor for project success which is to be encouraged rather than discouraged, and better use of tools that occurred after July 2015

Many risks were mitigated once the redesign effort was completed and the Board of Regents approved the Program’s revised timeline, which was based on a fully resource-loaded integrated schedule

The program has two open risks remaining which still require risk mitigation strategies to be put in place. These two risks relate to the Integrated Service Center (ISC) staff and improving the business processes/system functionality. From our perspective, each of these remaining risks requires its own separate risk mitigation plan to be implemented; additionally, ongoing oversight should continue in order to minimize those remaining risks

In this Lessons Learned Report, we explore what we believe led to the Program’s overall success (Section 3) and what could be done to enhance the success of UW’s future modernization projects (Section 4), and we provide detailed descriptions of the risks we identified during the life of the Program and what UW did to specifically mitigate or manage those risks (Appendix B). In addition, in Appendix A, we provide a high-level timeline of the Program’s major activities and events, and we provide in Appendix C a summary of our methods for assessing and determining risks.

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3. Themes of Success In looking back on the success of the HR/P Program and what it took for UW to achieve it, we believe there were seven factors or “themes,” which we have depicted in Figure 1, that contributed to the Program’s success. In particular, we believe there was one foundational factor, five contributing factors, and one over-arching factor that set the stage for the HR/P Program’s success that occurred just a little over three months ago. We describe each of these seven factors below.

Figure 1. HR/P Program Success Themes

3.1. UW’s Commitment to Modernizing Administrative Operations

In the early 2010s, UW began its journey toward the modernization of its administrative operations and services. Typically, there are many reasons why Higher Ed organizations undertake modernization initiatives. In general, it is to improve service delivery of those basic operations that keep the university functioning while still maintaining the institution’s strong commitment to education, research, students, faculty, and the broader community at large. UW, in particular, undertook its first administrative services modernization initiative–focusing on its HR and payroll functions–to ensure consistent practices across the university, improve and

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streamline its delivery of those services overall, and replace aging and obsolete technology systems. When starting a modernization initiative, it is usually relatively easy to make the commitment to begin the effort; but, it is not always so easy to maintain that commitment. However, in hindsight, UW did; and, in our view, UW and its President and her team should all be commended for having the tenacity, fortitude, and persistence to maintain such a commitment to making its first major modernization effort a success. UW’s modernization effort began in the early 2010s when UW undertook an effort to re-engineer and create a roadmap for modernizing its HR and payroll functions. This roadmap then led UW to conduct a procurement and award a contract to Workday, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software company, to implement UW’s first ERP system. Over the next four and a half years, UW faced many challenges and encountered some “bumps” in the

road; but, throughout it all, UW maintained its commitment and dedication to completing its first foray into a modern and more efficient way to conducting its HR/P duties. As a result, UW now has its first “piece” of a much larger modern administrative operation in place; and, that first piece can, and should, be used to leverage UW’s next modernization effort.

3.2. Courage to Embark on Redesign

Once UW made a commitment to modernization and undertook the HR/P Program, it became apparent that the effort was not an easy undertaking. Many times during the last four years, UW found that it was breaking new ground with its business practices and with its vendor partners in determining how to best move forward into uncertain territories. This led to some early missteps that caused severe problems much later in the Program’s lifecycle. Once these problems became more well known, UW was faced with making a decision—whether to maintain its journey toward modernization or turn back and miss the opportunity. This was not an easy or comfortable place for the University to be in; but, in our view, by maintaining its commitment to modernization, UW had the courage to “pause” and take a deep and thorough reassessment of where it was on the HR/P Program. This reassessment reinforced the need to continue forward with the Program while also taking a step back to rethink and redesign UW’s

business processes to better utilize a new modern system for conducting its HR/P functions and activities. This redesign effort took almost a year to accomplish; but, again, in our view, it led to a much better service delivery system for the University’s HR/P functions than would have resulted from the previous design. Even though UW is currently facing some stabilization hurdles, we believe those problems and issues would have been much worse if UW had not taken the time and effort to redesign the original configuration of the Workday system. We believe the redesign effort was an important contributing factor to the HR/P Program’s overall

success.

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3.3. Practical Approach to Redesign Effort

Once the pause and reset period was complete and the decision to continue moving forward was made, UW encountered another dilemma about “what to do” and “how to do it” with respect to redesigning its existing, but incomplete, Workday system. As a result, UW drew upon its new vendor partner’s (Huron) expertise in business process design and ERP configuration that Huron had gained from assisting other Higher Ed institutions in implementing and configuring similar systems. This redesign effort, known as Building a Cohesive Design (BaCD), consisted of:

Consolidating all of the program’s previous development phase-related artifacts (i.e., workflows, requirements, design documents, test cases, etc.) for each of the major business functions that were included in the program’s scope

Determining the gaps between those artifacts and the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) artifacts that UW had developed a few years previously

Identifying the configuration changes that would need to be made, or could be made, to align the two sets of artifacts

In addition to the BaCD effort, UW developed a set of “guardrails,” or guiding principles, that it would use when redesigning the system over the next year. The process for developing the guardrails, and the guardrails themselves, acted as boundaries for which the reconfigured system would need to stay within as the program moved forward. These guardrails ensured consistency throughout UW’s Workday system. When looking back on the program and all that it did and accomplished, we believe that these two efforts–the BaCD and guardrails–were a practical and reasonable approach to validating “what was” and “what should not be” in the Workday system at that time; it then helped set the design and configuration direction for the new system going forward. It is clear to us that without going through that nine-month-long effort, UW would not be where it is now: having a working system that is meeting UW’s business needs.

3.4. Excellent Use of Tools

Another contributing factor to the Program’s success was its excellent use of tools beginning in July 2015. When the reset and pause was happening, one of the requirements that UW placed upon the Program team was the need to implement a better set of “tools” (i.e., measures, tracking and monitoring methods, performance dashboards, repositories) for managing and reporting on the program’s activities. This use of tools increased the transparency into what was happening on the Program by a hundred fold, and, for the first time, allowed everyone–including ourselves–into seeing what was actually occurring in the Program’s various activities. This greatly helped UW’s executive leadership team to provide better guidance and more closely monitor how and what the Program was doing. In addition, as the Program progressed in its lifecycle, it produced a number of templates and reporting mechanisms that would serve both UW and the State of Washington as a whole, as good models for future modernization initiatives. In particular, we found the Program’s extensive “readiness assessment scorecard,” which was a tool that the Program’s Leadership Team (PLT) and the Executive Sponsors used in their decision making process for this year’s

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Go-Live to be an exceptional toolset. We found that scorecard to be: (1) quite extensive with good detail and supporting documentation and (2) focused on the correct program areas when determining the readiness for Go-Live. In fact, our review found, based on our more than 15 years of experience providing QA in three different states, that the HR/P readiness assessment scorecard is one of the best we have ever seen! All and all, we believe that the Program’s use of various tools and tracking and monitoring methods was another factor that contributed to the Program’s overall success.

3.5. Well-Managed Testing Effort

Prior to the 2015 pause and reset, an area that the Program struggled with was the planning and adequate testing of the Workday system. When the initial testing began in the Fall 2015, it became clear that the original testing approach was not adequate for ensuring UW’s Workday system would meet the University’s business needs and that the new system was consistent with the Program’s business and technical requirements. Without that adequate certainty, UW had no assurance that its new Workday system would be able to perform what it was intended to do. As a result, the pause and reset began in earnest. As a result, over the next year, the Program Team completely redesigned and re-planned its approach to testing. Even though the testing re-planning effort took some time to develop, it was much better and more consistent with industry best practices than the prior approach to testing. In addition, the testing team, itself, was exceptional in its leadership and use of management techniques and methods; more so than we had seen in the previous testing attempt. Overall, during the eight months of testing activities, we found that the testing team was consistently well-organized, repeatedly engaged in good communications practices, and did an exceptional job in managing each cycle and phase of the Program’s testing activities.

3.6. Setting Priorities Helped

One of the many challenges that most projects face is competing priorities, time pressures, and never having enough resources to meet all of the demands. To minimize those tensions, we often recommend to government agencies that they prioritize the workload and focus their resources accordingly. Typically, this is harder to do than it would appear on the surface, and agencies tend to struggle with making prioritization happen. However, the HR/P Program consistently used prioritization in almost every area of its activities. For example, we usually recommend that agencies focus their limited testing resources on those test cases that are the most critical to business operations or that are likely to be the most frequently used by the end users. In our experience, we have seen very few government organizations prioritize their test cases in that manner. Yet, UW did; and not only in testing but in almost every other area of the Program’s activities. This consistent use of prioritization, we believe, was another contributing factor to the Program’s success and its ability to meet its various time commitments.

3.7. Dedication of Staff, Managers, and Executive Leadership

The final factor, or the over-arching theme, for the Program’s success, was the dedication and commitment of the staff, managers, and entire UW executive leadership team that we believe

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directly led to the Program’s success. Many individuals throughout the University contributed their time, expertise, and knowledge to the Program. They worked long hours, deferred time off, went above and beyond what was required of them, and dedicated themselves to helping make UW’s new Workday system possible. Without that most vital ingredient of dedication and commitment, UW’s new Workday system may not have happened. But, the new system did Go-Live and it does work; and its success is directly related to UW’s staff, managers’, and leaders’ dedication and commitment to the University and its road toward modernization and supporting the broader community.

4. Considerations for the Future Projects

Even though UW’s HR/P Program can, and should, be considered a successful endeavor, we do have a number of considerations that UW may want to include in its next modernization effort. Our considerations are based on our observations and experience overseeing the HR/P Program over the last four and a half years and what we know about possible future UW modernization efforts. In addition, we believe that our considerations should be—or would be most beneficial when—

incorporated into specific activities that are occurring on those possible future projects. For that reason, we have organized our considerations based on the first three major phases of a project’s

typical lifecycle: (1) Initiation, (2) Planning, and (3) Execution. Before we begin sharing our considerations, it is important to first clarity what we would consider of sufficient value to be included in each of those three project lifecycle phases. In Table 1 below, we provide a commonly accepted definition of each of the three phases (Initiation, Planning, and Execution) and examples of some typical activities that would occur during each phase.

Table 1. Definition and Activities of Project Lifecycle Phases

Lifecycle Phase Definition and Activity Examples

Initiation

Typically, this is the first phase of a project’s lifecycle. In public institutions, this phase may be more conceptual in nature and would likely encompass the internal discussions that institutions undergo when considering large complex projects.

These discussions typically occur within the institution’s management

teams and may include some high-level considerations focusing on the project’s objectives, scope, purpose, and deliverables.

This phase may also include some discussions and early stage gate approvals by the institution’s oversight agencies.

Common activities may include: o Development of a high level scope o Discussions with institutions’ Executive Management Team

and the oversight agencies

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o Adoption of the project’s high level guiding principles,

objectives, and goals o Request for initial project funding and/or assignment of

resources to conduct business case analysis or feasibility study

Typically, the project initiation phase ends when the institution decides whether or not to undertake the project. This decision is usually made once the information from the business case analysis or feasibility case is complete. If the decision is made to undertake the project, then the institution begins the Planning phase.

Planning

In general, the second phase of the project’s lifecycle consists of

detailed planning on how the project will be managed, funded, organized, and conducted.

It is generally during the planning phase that institutions have in-depth discussions and will most likely need approvals from their oversight agencies to move forward.

Project planning requires an in-depth analysis and structuring of the following activities:

o Setting project goals o Identifying project deliverables o Creating initial project schedules and timelines o Creating supporting project management plans

It is also during this phase that institutions begin their procurement process, which involves developing and issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP), conducting the competitive procurement, selecting a vendor partner, and awarding the contract.

Common activities may include: o Developing the various best practice-based project

management plans o Creating a project team by assigning staff resources o Determining project ownership and key responsibilities o Defining major project deliverables o Developing high level schedules and project milestones o Creating a project charter and implementing a project

governance structure o Developing RFPs o Conducting competitive procurements o Awarding contracts

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Typically, the project planning phase ends upon contract award or when final approvals are received from oversight agencies or the institution’s highest level executive.

Execution

During the project’s third phase, Execution, the project begins and ends its development and implementation activities.

It is during this phase that the project’s deliverables are produced. The project’s activities are conducted per project management plans

and any other “plan” that the vendor is required to produce. The project’s activities are monitored by the entities responsible for

providing oversight and typically include the steering committee, executive management, and oversight groups.

Common activities may include: o Performing the activities needed to meet the project’s

objectives (requirements verification, design, configuration, testing, cutover, etc.)

o Developing detailed fully resource-loaded project schedules o Managing the project team and resources o Collecting and analyzing performance data o Managing risks and issues o Conducting change control and implementing approved

changes o Establishing and managing project communication

The Execution phase usually ends upon the Go-Live event but may also include some portion of the stabilization period.

Even though we define each of these three phases as separate, discrete categories of activities– each with its own beginning and ending–we recognize that, in reality, it is not always the case. Typically, the phases “blur” into one another; as a result, our considerations could occur at different points in a future project’s lifecycle or timeline. But, for discussion purposes, we have organized our

thoughts using the project phase framework described in Table 1 above. Using that basic high level framework as our starting point, we summarize and depict our eight considerations in Figure 2 and describe each of those in more detail in the following sections.

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Figure 2. Considerations for UW’s Future Modernization Projects by Project Lifecycle Phase

4.1. Commit to a Comprehensive Approach for Change Management

One of the areas that almost all institutions struggle with when undertaking modernization projects is the amount and magnitude of the change that the new system will bring to the institution’s various organizations. To manage that change element, most projects include some kind of change management component in order to mitigate the risks and the upheaval that the change involves. Even though most institutions recognize the need for change management, it is usually the most underfunded, under-scoped, and under-resourced element of the project. In that respect, UW was no different than other projects’ change management activities that we have monitored over the last 15 years. Like most other organizations, UW also frequently struggled with the change management element that would be necessary to fully utilize the functionality in their new system. From our perspective, some of that struggle involved fully embracing the business function changes that would likely result from the new system; it was, however, sometimes due to the Workday functions not fully meeting UW’s business needs. In addition, due to the changing nature of the Program’s leadership team prior to 2015’s pause and reset period, it was a challenge to maintain true continuity in the Program’s change management approach.

Regardless of the reasons, as UW moves forward on its next modernization project, we strongly recommend that UW expect and require a comprehensive approach to the project’s change management component. The discussions and considerations of the next project’s change management approach need to occur early in the project’s lifecycle, and it must be fully recognized by the entire UW “chain of command” as an element that will need extensive and

• Commit to a Comprehensive Approach for Change Management

• Adopt Employment Sustainability Practices for Project Staffing

Initiation

• Start Major Organizational Changes During Project Planning

• Select an Experienced and Knowledgeable Implementer

• Include Comprehensive Stabilization Deliverables

Planning

• Avoid Just-In-Time Delivery of “Plans”

• Spend Time Defining and Clarifying Roles, Responsibilities, Authorities, and Duties

• Require and Enforce Transparency into Project’s Activities

Execution

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detailed planning and comprehensive funding. With this type of recognition and establishment of expectations, we would anticipate that the costs and staffing of the project’s change management component could be equal to or more than the project’s development and implementation costs and resources. This is quite reasonable and should not be unexpected when developing budget and cost information.

In addition to that element, we also recommend that the change management approach and plan specifically include the following:

A “dealing with change” element that is consistently reinforced throughout all of the project’s future change management activities

Typically, most project’s change management approaches include a “dealing with change” element; but, over time, as the project’s activities increase, it is often overlooked in the later phases of the project’s lifecycle. We have found that the more effective change management approaches instill, reinforce, and maintain consistency of “dealing with change” throughout all of the change management component’s subsequent activities.

All of the training components for the new system

Often times, a project’s training activities are separate from the project’s change management effort. In our experience, the more successful projects integrate the two components so they reinforce each other and are a natural progression from (1) high-level discussions about how change affects individuals to (2) specifics like how a particular screen and various keystrokes required to perform a business task on the new system will affect how an individual does his or her current job. We have often observed instances where more successful projects require their implementer or the implementer’s subcontractor to also perform the change management element instead of separating out the training provider from the change management provider. This close alliance between the implementer and the change manager helps ensure that the change management approach complements the implementer’s approach to system development and implementation. We strongly recommend that UW consider such an arrangement on its next modernization project.

4.2. Adopt Employment Sustainability Practices for Project Staffing

One of the ongoing challenges that the HR/P Program faced throughout its lifecycle was its staffing. As we noted in Appendix B, it was the first risk we observed and it was also the last risk we observed. There are many reasons why staffing was such a challenge for UW; but, in particular, it was likely related to: (1) the use of limited duration positions which left staff with much uncertainty about their future UW employment opportunities after Go-Live, (2) the competitive job market in the Seattle region, (3) the ongoing disruptions in management styles and cultures, and (4) the job burnout from trying to balance working long hours and the ongoing work demands. To prevent these types of risks from occurring in its future

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modernization projects, we strongly recommend that UW consider the following practices to increase “sustainability” of its future project teams:

Require the use of permanent positions in lieu of limited duration positions with the guarantee to oversight agencies that the positions will be reviewed at some point during stabilization

Adopt pay practices that compensate for long work hours

Adopt performance incentives that tie job outcomes to pay increases that encourage longevity of employment and reduce turnover

Seek higher level position classifications or pay levels, to the extent possible, to compensate for the competitive Seattle job market

Maintain a team of HR professionals during the entire project’s duration to conduct ongoing recruitment activities in order to compensate for current or potential vacancies

Ensure that resource estimates account for and include the need to have staff back-ups, coverage during leaves, and ongoing vacancy levels

Adjust project timelines or include schedule contingencies to compensate for “the learning curve” of new staff

Encourage the use of paid retirees to provide legacy system expertise on the project or to backfill in business areas for the staff that is reassigned to the project team

Use consultant expertise, to the extent possible, for activities that (1) do not require UW-specific knowledge or (2) will not include a “knowledge transfer” component at some point in the project’s lifecycle (meaning the knowledge is acquired and kept with UW staff resources)

4.3. Start Major Organizational Changes During Project Planning

During the HR/P Program’s 2015 pause and reset period, a decision was made to form the ISC, which would become a fundamental element in delivering UW’s modern HR/P services. Once that decision was made, work began on determining the ISC’s staffing needs and its overall duties and responsibilities. For a variety of different reasons, it took several months to fully staff and implement the ISC; in fact, the ISC only became fully operational in the same month of Go-Live. Even though the ISC appears to be operating well, the decision to create the ISC was made well within the project’s execution phase which, for a time, caused some disruptions.

In our experience, we have found that it is important that major organizational changes be considered early on in the project’s lifecycle. This helps set expectations early in the preliminary project discussions and helps the institution better visualize what the modern

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operations may look like within that future organizational structure. Preferably, organizational changes should be discussed and agreed to in the project’s initiation and/or planning phases or deferred until after project closeout. Otherwise, the major organizational change adds another level of complexity and represents a large element of risk for the project. As a result, the project’s focus, direction, and resources could be easily diverted from the project’s agreed upon objectives and scope. By either creating or intending to create the new organization early in the project’s lifecycle it allows the institution the ability to appoint the new organization’s leaders early on, thereby allowing them to have input into the project’s later system development and business process design activities. In addition, it allows the new and current business owners to fully vet their individual duties and responsibilities and be more prepared for when the new system goes live.

In the event that UW may be struggling with visualizing and creating new organizational structures to support more modern services in its early project discussions, UW may want to consider, and possibly include in its future RFPs, an option whereby competing vendor partners propose organizational changes as part of their proposal. Assuming that the competitors are knowledgeable in Higher Ed ERP implementations and, therefore, may have some insights and thoughts on best practice organizational structures, UW would gain from the vendor’s thoughts on how to enhance its implementation of the ERP-based business processes and operations. If UW were to then consider those vendor-suggested changes as part of the project’s execution phase, then it would be important for UW to seek additional funding and staff resources to make those proposed organizational changes well in advance of any Go-Live. In addition, it would be important to adjust project timelines so that UW would have adequate time to implement and stabilize the new organizational structures.

4.4. Select an Experienced and Knowledgeable Implementer

One of the key ingredients of a successful modernization project is the selection of an experienced and knowledgeable solutions implementer. As most of us know who are familiar with public sector projects, there are many examples of projects where the vendor partner was inadequate in meeting the needs of the institution and the State. In fact, UW found this with its first implementer and, during the 2015 pause and reset period, was able to acquire another implementer who was better equipped to meet UW’s needs.

As UW moves forward with its next modernization project, it will be vital that its selected implementer be experienced and knowledgeable in UW’s particular brand of ERP software and able to clearly demonstrate deep knowledge of Higher Ed administrative operations. To accomplish this goal, we recommend that UW consider the following in its future procurements of implementers:

Separate the implementer procurement from the software procurement

Restrict that competition to only vendors that have successfully implemented UW’s brand of ERP software versus vendors who have no experience in that particular ERP software brand but do have ERP experience in competing software brands

Require of the company extensive Higher Ed-specific references

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Require the vendor to demonstrate knowledge of Higher Ed administrative operations and functions and then how each proposed team member has that same knowledge and expertise

Require the vendors, as part of their proposals, to provide “best practice” pros and cons of the ERP’s configuration options so UW’s business-knowledgeable procurement participants understand why the implementer is proposing one configuration over another

Include in the sample contract language stating that the vendor will be prohibited from proposing staff in its proposal who will ultimately not be available for UW’s project, thereby ensuring that UW receives qualified and knowledgeable vendor staff

4.5. Include Comprehensive Stabilization Deliverables

One of the most challenging, but often overlooked, components in a project’s lifecycle is the stabilization period, which occurs after Go-Live and usually lasts from a few months to a year or more after the new system is operational. Typically, it is during this time that: (1) additional defects are found, (2) some of the functions in the new system are working the way they were intended but are not meeting the business needs, and (3) deferred change requests are processed and implemented. For UW, the HR/P Program’s stabilization period has been exceptionally challenging and much more difficult than anticipated. Some of the struggles may be the result of not enough detailed planning and the unexpected level of assistance needed from UW organizations. Certainly, there are likely many reasons for the particular challenges that UW is facing. However, from our perspective looking back over the last few months before Go-Live, it was not always particularly clear whose responsibility–UW, Huron, or Workday–it was to plan for, coordinate, and manage the various stabilization activities.

To avoid this situation in UW’s future projects, we recommend that the lead responsibility for stabilization planning and coordination should be with the implementer. This means that the RFP would need to include a number of stabilization-specific deliverables; the contract would also need to include those deliverables with associated payment streams that specifically relate to stabilization activities. The deliverables could include planning, on-site support for a specific amount of time, and managing specific aspects of the stabilization effort such as making design and configuration changes.

However, in our view, the most important primary deliverable should be a comprehensive stabilization plan for how UW and its vendor partners will manage the new system after a successful Go-Live. To begin, the plan should be delivered at least 90 days prior to Go-Live in order to give UW adequate time to review and discuss the proposed approach to stabilization and make changes as necessary. Specifically, the plan should include:

Clearly defined roles, responsibilities, expectations, authorities, and duties that encompass all post-Go-Live support organizations, including all participating vendor partners

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Functional organizational structures consistent with the clearly defined roles and responsibilities

Description of how, immediately after Go-Live, requests for assistance will be handled and by whom

What information will be used for monitoring post-Go-Live activities

What criteria the implementer will use to notify UW of opportunities to begin downsizing UW and vendor resources and how often those measurements will occur

Description of how post-Go-Live training needs will be identified and addressed as a result of the data gathered during stabilization, how and by whom that training will be provided, how training will be provided to new employees who are hired post-Go-Live, and at what point post-Go-Live training will migrate to UW’s ongoing training programs

We believe these types of plans and activities would greatly improve the manner in which the stabilization period is managed and better meet UW’s expectations and needs when implementing future modernization initiatives.

4.6. Avoid Just-In-Time Delivery of “Plans”

Even though the typical planning phase of a project’s lifecycle may include the development of many project management-focused plans, we have found that many more plans get developed during the project’s execution phase. For example, many institutions require their vendor partner to provide a testing plan and a training plan. In fact, UW required its vendor partners to provide such plans; but, when looking back on the HR/P Program, we often found that those non-project management-focused plans were high-level, lacked initial detail, and were typically delivered “just in time” meaning they were provided shortly before the project activity began. We realize that the reason for this was likely related to time constraints and competing priorities. However, as a result, UW was limited in how much time it had to review, discuss, and approve those plans. Also, since there were so many time constraints on meeting project timeframes, it would have been difficult for the implementer to adjust its approach based upon UW-provided feedback. In the future, we recommend that the implementer’s contract include provisions that all plan-specific deliverables be provided to UW 90 days in advance for review and comment with final UW approval occurring within 60 days prior to the start of the activities encompassed in the plan. This should give both UW and its vendor partner adequate time to have solid discussions about and address any shortcomings.

4.7. Spend Time Refining and Clarifying Roles, Responsibilities, Expectations, Authorities, and Duties

In addition to having adequate time to review plans, it is also important to spend time refining and clarifying the roles and responsibilities contained within those various plans. Even though every plan that was developed by the HR/P Program typically included role and responsibility information, it did not always include enough detail for those impacted entities to clearly

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understand what specifically each entity was expected to do. As a result, this would lead to expectations that were not being met sufficiently by either entity. In the future, we recommend that UW and its vendor partners spend time refining and clarifying roles and responsibilities—not just when plans get approved, but also as the plan is being implemented. It would also be wise for all plans to include information on expectations, the specific authority that each entity has, and what specific duties each is expected to perform, how often, and when. This should help better address expectations for future projects.

4.8. Require and Enforce Transparency into Project’s Activities

As we noted in Section 3, we were especially pleased, after the 2015 pause and rest period, with how well the project performed on its use of tools; and, as a result, with its ability to generate valuable information about what was happening on the project. In addition, the project did an excellent job in providing transparency into its activities and addressing any concerns that the Executive Sponsors and other oversight entities had. However, this was not the case prior to the 2015 pause and reset period where there was limited ability by all involved oversight entities to clearly understand the true state of the project’s status. In the future, we recommend that UW require and enforce transparency in all of its future modernization project’s activities—starting with the beginning of the project and continuing into stabilization. In fact, the HR/P Program and its exceptional use of tools and methods would be an excellent example to follow for accomplishing this!

5. Conclusion In the end, we believe that UW’s HR/P Program was an unqualified success and has greatly moved UW forward on its quest for modern administrative services and operations. There were a number of factors or themes that led to that success and will provide good examples for UW’s future modernization projects. Overall, the program’s success was a tremendous accomplishment for the University and a significant achievement for the team of managers and staff who were responsible for UW’s HR/P Program. It was a great undertaking by the University and UW’s President and her team of dedicated executives, managers, and staff, and they should all be congratulated for a job well done!

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Appendix A. Program Background

UW’s journey toward modernizing its HR/P functions spanned a number of years, beginning in the early 2010s and ending just recently when its new Workday system went live on June 27, 2017. In looking back over the life of the HR/P Program, there were many steps that UW took to achieve its first foray into modernization. As depicted in Figure 3 below, and using the project lifecycle framework we described in Section 4 Table 1, the Program began its Initiation activities in the early 2010s and ended its Execution activities this year.

Figure 3. General Time Periods of the Project Lifecycle Phases of UW’s HR/P Program

In Table 2 below we provide some high-level descriptions of the major events that occurred during each of the lifecycle phases that: (1) demonstrate the sequence of events, (2) most likely contained some major impact or risk element, or (3) were significant to the success of the program.

Table 2. Significant/Major Program Events in the Lifecycle of the HR/P Program

Lifecycle Phase Significant/Major Program Events

Initiation

2010s to 2012: UW recognizes that its HR/P legacy systems are obsolete and require replacement. In addition, UW realizes that, when it replaces those legacy systems, it will also have an opportunity to modernize its HR/P business processes. As a result, UW engages Accenture Consulting to conduct a BPR for its HR/P business processes. This BPR effort becomes the foundation for the HR/P Program.

Initiation:

Early 2010s to 2012

Planning:

2012 to 2013

Execution:

2013 to Mid 2017

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Planning

Early 2012: UW was involved in preparing an RFP and many business process redesign activities were underway

September 2012: UW releases RFP for a new HR/P system

May 2013: UW completes redesign sessions

July – August 2013: UW conducts Implementation Planning Study (IPS) with the two competing vendor teams each spending several days on campus with the UW project team and stakeholders; vendor teams made presentations, presented demonstrations, and participated in Q&A

September 2013: UW enters into contract negotiations with Workday as the prime contractor and IBM as the implementer to configure and implement the Workday HR/P software

December 2013: bluecrane provides first QA assessment

March 2014: Workday contract signed and work begins on the configuration activities. In addition, UW selects the program’s first Project Manager.

Execution

April 2014: Design phase begins

May 2014: Project charter signed. The Program’s first Project Manager resigns and the Program’s former Organizational Change Manger is selected to be Second Project Manager.

Spring 2015: Program’s first Executive Sponsor retires

Spring 2015: Program’s second Project Manager resigns, Interim Project Manager assigned

Summer 2015: UW’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) becomes the Program’s second Executive Sponsor

Summer 2015: UW’s CIO designates one of her managers to become the new Interim Project Manager

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Fall 2015: Huron is engaged, assumes the role of Project Manager, and creates a Program Management Office (PMO) to manage and coordinate the Program’s activities.

Fall 2015: UW hires a permanent Executive Director to be responsible for the entire Program and manage the PMO

Fall 2015: Formalized testing of the original configuration of the Workday system begins and many problems are encountered

November 2015: First integrated program schedule is released and it is clear that it will not be adequate to manage the Program going forward

December 2015: Pause and reassessment begins. A group of UW personnel and consultants are designated to begin an in-depth examination of business processes and UW’s configured Workday system. This group of individuals is located to a separate location which becomes known as “the Capsule.”

January 2016: The PMO begins a design and requirements validation effort which becomes known as “building a cohesive design” (BaCD). It consisted of: o Consolidating all of the program’s previous development phase

related-artifacts (i.e., workflows, requirements, design documents, test cases, etc.) for each of the UW’s Workday system’s eight major business functions

o Determining the gaps between those artifacts and the BPR artifacts completed during the Program’s Initiation Phase

o Identifying the configuration changes that would need to be made, or could be made, to align the two sets of artifacts

In addition to the BaCD effort, UW announced the formation and the creation of the ISC

March 2016: The BaCD effort is refined into three phases: (1) Preparation (Prep), (2) Foundation, and (3) Design Integrity Validation (DIVe)

May 2016: The Program received approval of its new timeline from the Board of Regents with an estimated Go-Live date to occur sometime in June 2017. In addition, the Program published its first version of a fully resource-loaded program schedule.

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July 2016: An updated “best practice”-based testing strategy and approach was released

September 2016: The Program gained approval from the business owners that the proposed reconfiguration of the Workday system would be able to meet UW’s operational needs

October 2016: The Program’s Executive Sponsor announced her resignation; as a result, the Executive Sponsor role was reassigned to another member of the Program’s Executive Steering Committee

November 2016: Formalized testing began

January 2017: Planning for cutting over, or as it became known “the cutover,” began, which would be when UW would stop the legacy systems and begin using the new Workday system, began

February 2017: The Program announced that the Go-Live date would be June 27, 2017

March 2017: The Program issued an extensive “readiness assessment scorecard,” which would be the tool that the PMO and the Executive Sponsors would use when making decisions regarding June’s Go-Live

April 2017: The formal cutover to the Workday system began. Most of the ISC positions had been filled and all of the program staff was relocated to the ISC

May 2017: Testing was completed, data conversion was underway, and all UW entities were reporting that they were ready for the formal cutover that would occur the following month

June 2017: UW’s Workday system went live on June 27, 2017

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Appendix B. Risks and Issues Raised by QA Over the Life of the HR/P Program

Regardless of how well governance structures or project management approaches are utilized, all projects experience risks and issues throughout their lifecycles, and the HR/P Program was no exception. Remember that risks are uncertain events that may or may not occur. Risks are evaluated in terms of: (1) probability of occurrence and (2) impact if the risk event does indeed occur.

From December 2013 to July 2017, we raised a total of 30 unique risks in 44 monthly reports over the life of the HR/P Program. Table 4 describes these 30 different risks, the dates where those risks appeared in our reports, and then a description of how and when the HR/P Program mitigated or managed the risk for the remainder of program.

Table 3 below provides a high level summary of those 30 unique risks broken down by our QA assessment categories and areas. (See Appendix C for more information regarding our assessment categories and associated areas.)

Table 3. QA Risks Identified During the Life of the HR/P Program

Assessment Category and Areas

Number of Risks

Average/Or Number of Months

Open

Application

Requirements, Design, Development, and Configuration

3 6

Testing 6 8

Integrations 2 7

Data Preparation 1 3

Category Total 12 6.7

Project Management & Sponsorship

Schedule 3 7

Staffing 4 7

Scope 2 7

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PEO Processes: Change, Risk, Issue, Quality Management

2 9

Governance 2 1

Category Total 13 6.5 People

Organization Preparation and Readiness

3 5

Business Processes/System Functionality

2 1

Category Total 5 3.8

Total QA Risks Identified 30 6.6

Below, we highlight some of the interesting points presented in our Tables 3 and 4:

The first risk we identified (in 2013) related to staffing.

The last risk we identified (in 2107) also related to staffing.

Governance risks were identified early in the Program’s lifecycle and some of our last discussions with UW also related to governance.

Testing experienced the highest number of risks but was resolved once: (1) a “best practice”-based testing approach was put in place, (2) a method and a tool for capturing traceability were implemented, and (3) a fully resource-loaded schedule was approved.

The vast majority of the risks were identified when the reset and pause began in July 2015 and continued throughout the remaining life of the Program. In our view, this increased reporting of risks was not necessarily because the risks increased (when the reset and pause began) but was more related to the increased transparency, improved project reporting, the consistent exercise of good communication practices, and better use of tools that occurred after July 2015.

Many risks were mitigated once the redesign effort was completed and the Board of Regents approved the Program’s revised timeline, which was based on a fully resource- loaded integrated schedule.

The program has two open risks remaining which still require risk mitigation strategies to put in place. These two risks relate to the Integrated Service Center (ISC) staff and improving the business processes/system functionality. From our perspective, each of

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these remaining risks requires its own separate risk mitigation plan to be implemented; additionally, ongoing oversight should continue in order to minimize those remaining risks.

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Table 4. QA Risks Identified During UW’s HR/P Program

QA Area of Assessment

Assessment Date

QA Risk Identified Close Date/

Project’s Response to QA Risk

Application

Requirements, Design,

Development, and

Configuration

July 2015

August 2015

(Open for 8 months)

Risk: There was a concern that the scope defined by the HR/P configuration was not aligned with the scope defined in the requirements. There was also a risk that modifications to the Workday configuration would be required as issues were identified during the End-to-End testing scheduled to begin in September 2015. If significant changes were made to the business processes and the associated Workday configuration, there would have been an impact on the planned timeframe for testing. Additionally, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) functionality required for the HR/P implementation would not be delivered until the Workday 25 release, which was originally scheduled for September 2015 but was then rescheduled to October 2015. This delay would have likely impacted the completion of End-to-End testing, especially if the FLSA delivery was further delayed. Recommendation: The project schedule should be re-worked to accommodate time extension dependencies.

May 2016: The Program received approval of its new timeline from the Board of Regents with an estimated Go-Live date to occur sometime in June 2017. In addition, the Program published its first version of a fully resource-loaded program schedule which included time extension dependencies.

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Assessment Date




Development, and

Configuration

November 2015

December 2015

January 2016 February 2016

March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 (Open for 8

months)

Risk: Even though ongoing and “last minute” configuration changes are not unusual for developing and implementing software products such as Workday, the extent to which this was happening within a few months of the originally scheduled Go-Live was troubling and causing significant wide-spread risks throughout the program. In addition, at that point in the program’s timeline, it was not clear that stakeholders were in agreement about what was necessary from a configuration standpoint for a successful Go-Live. Recommendations:

1. The PLT, with support from key staff members, should determine what exactly is necessary from a configuration standpoint for a successful Go-Live. This information should then be mapped to what was currently in the Workday system and then determine what was still needed to complete the configuration. Based on that information, then the Team should determine what was necessary from a resource perspective to complete the configuration and how everyone would know from a business prospective if they “got there.”

2. UW should step back from previous efforts and document what exactly was necessary from a configuration standpoint for a successful implementation and the ongoing

July 2016: Starting in the beginning of 2016, the Program took a number of actions to mitigate the requirements-related risks. These actions included: (1) documenting the tight correlation of requirements to tests; (2) increasing the involvement of end users in creating and reviewing documentation; (3) utilizing the agile approach of conducting sprints for configuring, prototyping, and correcting the system as needed; (4) concentrating Program efforts on high volume, critical functionality; (5) maintaining up-to-date documentation; (6) tracking changes through the JIRA system; (7) configuring and prototyping Workday so that the business owners could validate functionality and provide feedback, and (8) developing a TTM to ensure adequate testing of business processes.

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Assessment Date



support of the new system. In addition, the Program should adopt and adhere to a repeatable and sustainable requirements management practice.

3. Any proposed design and requirements validation approach process should be conducted in a formalized and structured manner with consistent follow-through for the remaining requirements, design, development, and configuration activities that would result from that effort.


Development, and

Configuration

April 2016

May 2016

(Open for 3 months)

Risk: The Program adopted a non-standard approach to requirements management which created the risk of missing requirements during the future testing effort. Recommendation: The Program should adopt risk mitigation strategies such as allocating additional time for UAT in order to accommodate any missed requirements.

July 2016: Starting in the beginning of 2016, the Program took a number of actions to mitigate the requirements-related risks. These actions included: (1) documenting the tight correlation of requirements to tests; (2) increasing the involvement of end users in creating and reviewing documentation; (3) utilizing the agile approach of conducting sprints for configuring, prototyping, and correcting the system as needed; (4) concentrating Program efforts on high volume, critical functionality; (5) maintaining up-to-date documentation; (6) tracking changes through the JIRA system; (7) configuring and prototyping Workday so that the business owners could validate functionality and provide feedback, and (8) developing a TTM to ensure adequate testing of business processes.

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Assessment Date



Testing

July 2015

August 2015

(Open for 10 months)

Risk: Testing of one or more End-to-End test scenarios would have likely been delayed if there was a delay in the completion of the associated business process, configuration, or integration activities. As a result, the start of additional scenarios may have also been delayed if one or more predecessor activities had not been completed on time. There was also a risk that parallel payroll testing would not have been effective until the Workday FLSA solution was released and the payroll history had been loaded. Recommendation: The project schedule should be re-worked to accommodate time extension dependencies.


Testing

September 2015


Risk: The Workday FLSA functionality required for the HR/P implementation was not scheduled for release until November 2015, which was near the end of End-to-End testing. Additionally, the delivery of UW Hires in December 2015 meant that this functionality would also have not been tested until after the scheduled completion of End-to-End testing. Both of these components were considered critical for the implementation of UW’s HR/P system. Given the late delivery of these components and the inability to test them during the appropriate time sequence, there was a high risk that UAT and Payroll Testing would be impacted, which would have likely resulted in: (1) compression of testing or deployment activities,

October 2016: In May 2016, the Program published the first iteration of its testing strategies which did a good job of describing how functionality would be tested and what would be considered a “successful” test. In addition, the approach defined the seven types of testing that the program intended to conduct. Specifically, these included: Unit, Regression, Integration, UAT, Data Conversion, Performance, and Parallel Payroll. By October 2016, the Program had made significant progress in completing the TTM, and it was on track for completion in November 2016.

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Assessment Date



(2) delay in meeting future program milestones, or (3) the possibility that the new system would be implemented with significant defects. Recommendation: The program should begin to minimize configuration changes in order to improve the outcome of its testing effort.

Throughout the program’s testing phase, we wish to note that pass rates were well above acceptable ranges. In addition, we consistently found the testing team to be well organized, proactive in preparing for whatever the next phase of the program’s testing activities would need to have in place or completed in order to meet the timelines, and able to maintain good communications and monitoring practices.

Testing

September 2015

(Open for 6 months)

Risk: End-to-End testing was over 50 percent behind in testing use cases and 75 percent behind in executing test scripts. At that time, there was no comprehensive plan in place to remedy the overall situation.

Recommendation: The Program should re-plan its weekly test completion rates to better align with test execution ramp-up, cadence, and progression through the testing groups. Contingency plans should also be developed as well to contend with the need to extend the timeframe for test execution, defect resolution, and retesting.


Testing

November 2015

December 2015

Risk: By the end of November 2015, it became evident that the Cycle 2 of End-to-End testing exit criteria would likely not be met. At that time, the Program had only met 30 percent of the criteria which would allow the exit of the End-to-End testing phase. In addition, new information

October 2016: In May 2016, the Program published the first iteration of its testing strategies, which did a good job of describing how functionality would be tested and what would be considered a “successful” test. In addition, the approach defined the seven

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Assessment Date



January 2016

February 2016

March 2016

April 2016

May 2016

June 2016


became available that month which indicated that modifications to UW Hires would not be completed until well after the completion of Cycle 2 End-to-End testing. Recommendations: 1. Reassess testing approach in order to assure

the University that when the new system is deployed: (1) it will perform as expected, (2) remaining legacy systems will continue to perform as they do today resulting in minimal downstream service disruptions, (3) correct information will be provided to partner organizations such as the State of Washington’s Health Care Authority, and (4) the new Workday system will ultimately result in improved services and more efficient University business processes.

2. Part of the upcoming path forward strategy should be devoted to adopting and adhering to a testing process that is consistent with industry standards and best practices.

3. Create a template for writing test cases in order to improve the quality of test cases and the overall quality of testing.

4. Increase the participation of subject matter experts in the testing activities.

types of testing that the program intended to conduct. Specifically, these included: Unit, Regression, Integration, UAT, Data Conversion, Performance, and Parallel Payroll. By October 2016, the Program had made significant progress in completing the TTM, and it was on track for completion in November 2016. In addition, the Program created a test case template and increased the participation of business owner staff in its testing activities. Throughout the program’s testing phase, we wish to note that pass rates were well above acceptable ranges. In addition, we consistently found the testing team to be well organized, proactive in preparing for whatever the next phase of the program’s testing activities would need to have in place or completed in order to meet the timelines, and able to maintain good communications and monitoring practices.

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Assessment Date



Testing July 2016

(Open for 3 months)

Risk: The Program’s testing activities continue to be at risk until the: (1) TTM is developed and being actively populated for the Program’s testing activities and (2) testing team is sufficiently staffed. Recommendation: The Program should: (1) complete its staffing of the testing team and (2) develop and begin populating the TTM–sooner rather than later–in order to assist in mitigating risks associated with testing.

October 2016: By October 2016, the Program had made significant progress in completing the TTM and it was on track for completion in November 2016.

Testing October 2016

(Open for 2 months)

Finding: The Program changed its approach to regression and integration testing in order to compensate for the extensive redesign of the Workday system which had been underway for most of 2016. Even though the revised testing approach made sense, it was unusual for a Program the size and complexity of HR/P to change testing strategy one month prior to the scheduled beginning of formalized testing. Recommendation: The Executive Sponsors should closely monitor the progress and results of the revised testing strategy. If additional changes to the revised testing strategy were required in the future, we also recommended that the Executive Sponsors direct the PMO to provide details supporting the change and how those changes would have enhanced the quality of new Workday system upon Go-Live.

December 2016: Since October 2016, the Program made significant progress in decreasing its testing risks. Specifically, the TTM was completed and most unit and regression testing activities ended (with the exception of the benefits module). In addition, in December 2016, over 80 percent of the iE2E Cycle 1 testing activities were completed and pass rates were well above acceptable ranges. Also, the testing team was well organized, engaging in good communications practices, and was managing the iE2E Cycle 1 activities exceptionally well.

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Assessment Date



Integrations October 2015


Risk: Work continued on data integration components between Workday and existing UW software applications. However, several data integrations were not completed prior to the end of Cycle 1 of the End-to-End testing. As a result, they had to be deferred to Cycle 2 thereby limiting the results of Cycle 1. Most of the Severity (Sev) 2 defects found during Cycle 1 were related to integrations. Additionally, the UW Hires integration would not be ready until after the end of End-to-End testing. Recommendation: The PLT should identify key integration activities that had to be completed within date-specific timeframes required to deliver a high quality system and develop mitigation strategies to ensure completion of the integrations. Within each of the critical time periods, the PLT team should also identify decision points as “trigger points” to implement previously developed and approved contingency plans to ensure a quality Go-Live implementation of the new system.

September 2016: In April 2016, the Program created an integrations-specification document and work was underway to identify and re-verify the necessary integrations and the requirements for each.

In May 2016, the Program published the first iteration of its testing strategies, which did a good job of describing how functionality would be tested and what would be considered a “successful” test. In addition, the approach defined the seven types of testing that the program intended to conduct. Specifically, these included: Unit, Regression, Integration, UAT, Data Conversion, Performance, and Parallel Payroll.

In September 2016, UW IT developed an outreach approach to validate impacted shadow systems that were present throughout the University. Some of the shadow systems were planned to be either retired because Workday provides the functionality currently provided by the shadow system or would require an interface because the shadow system provides unique functionality.

Integrations July 2016

(Open for 1 month)

Risk: UW does not have an oversight policy mechanism in place which restricts the development of new HR-related systems in order to: (1) allow the HR/P integrations to complete and (2) maintain the investment and process improvement value of the University’s Workday system.

August 2016: The Program, working through the governance structure, established processes to: (1) ensure the Program is aware of new HR/P development efforts and (2) evaluate the effort to see if it can be met by Workday.

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Assessment Date



Recommendation: UW develop a University-wide policy which: (1) halts the development of new HR-related systems that will need interfaces into the Workday system; and (2) includes a process that provides for a review and analysis by the HR/P Program of all proposed HR-related systems to ensure that the new system is not duplicating Workday features and functions and provides that the new system is approved by UW’s President, or designee.

Data Preparation

February 2016

March 2016

April 2016

(Open for 3 months)

Risk: The Program was experiencing: (1) a shortage of data conversion staff, (2) a lack of staff resources knowledgeable in the legacy systems, (3) changing requirements, and (4) inadequate specifications for Workday data. As a result, the efforts to clean, transform, and map data became very challenging. Recommendations:

1. Create a comprehensive data preparation strategy which includes mapping for Workday data and compensates for the staffing-related issues.

2. Create a data conversion approach that aligns with industry best practices to include data loads, subsequent mock conversions, and parallel payroll tests.

May 2016: Between April and May 2016, the Program took a number of actions to mitigate the data preparation risks. These steps included: (1) providing a part-time staff person knowledgeable in HEPPS to assist with data conversion; (2) making a decision to enforce cut-off dates; (3) assigning additional staff to the data conversion effort; (4) beginning the documentation of data mappings and transformations; (5) increasing participation by the business owners in the data cleansing activities; and (6) expanding the overall Data Conversion Plan.

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Assessment Date




Schedule

July 2015

August 2015


Risk: The Configuration Phase was extended by four weeks to allow time to complete business analysis and configuration activities. The beginning of End-to-End testing was also extended by four weeks. However, the completion date for End-to-End testing remained unchanged. Recommendation: The project schedule should be re-worked to accommodate time extension dependencies.


Schedule

September 2015

(Open for 8 months)

Risk: Even though the HR/P Program Teams were in the process of finalizing individual project schedules and there was some discussion of integrating those individual team schedules into an overall program schedule, there was still no complete and comprehensive schedule in place to hold the individual project teams and the overall program accountable. Without a fully integrated program schedule in place, it was unclear whether or not the program would be able to achieve its milestones. Recommendation: The program should develop a comprehensive, integrated program schedule based on industry best practices to ensure accountability.


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Schedule

November 2015

December 2015

January 2016

February 2016

March 2016

April 2016

May 2016

June 2016

(Open for 8 months)

Risk: In November 2015, the Program published an integrated program schedule. However, a number of components were still missing from that particular version of an integrated program schedule which would have been vital for holding program staff accountable for completing their assigned tasks and activities. Also, that plan did not include information for determining the extent to which some program areas were experiencing situations of over or under resource allocations. Recommendations:

1. Collect additional information in order to revise the integrated program schedule so that Executive Sponsors should be able to determine whether to: (1) provide additional staffing resources to offset over-allocated staff or staffing shortages in critical areas; (2) suspend approval of change requests; (3) postpone non-critical program activities; (4) take contingency steps to postpone the start of non-critical path activities up to the point that those activities then become part of the critical path; (5) modify dates of planned activities to be more realistic given current resource allocations; and (6) ultimately, if necessary, change the Go-Live date to be more consistent with the current situation.

2. The PLT should develop a new approach to maintaining the project schedule so that the Program produces a schedule that is

July 2016: From January 2016 to April 2016, the Program conducted resource leveling, developed timeframes, identified milestones, and established realistic dates. In addition, the Program implemented a time reporting process based on past actual data which it used to report on and make schedule adjustments.

In May 2016, the Program received approval of its new timeline from the Board of Regents with an estimated Go-Live date to occur sometime in June 2017. In addition, the Program published its first version of a fully resource-loaded program schedule which included time extension dependencies. In July 2016, the Program published a Program Schedule that provided greater detail than past schedules. This new schedule identified task name, duration, start date, finish date, percent complete, remaining work, status (red, yellow, green), predecessors, successors, resource names, and notes. In addition, it was clear that the program was actively using the schedule to manage its current activities.

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integrated, resource loaded, and consistent with industry best practices.

3. The Program’s Executives Sponsors should fully understand the ramifications of the new schedule’s assumptions and the responsibilities that they would have to assume in order to meet commitments of a revised schedule.

4. In order to meet the time commitments of a fully resource-loaded schedule with major milestones, the Executive Sponsors and their organizations should make decisions quickly, and they should be conscious of the Program’s resource commitments, resource needs, and the impacts that their and other stakeholders’ demands will have on meeting future timeframes.

5. Create a comprehensive, resource-loaded project plan.

Staffing

December 2013

(Open for 1 month)

Risk: Although recruitment activities had been underway for several months, the PLT expressed some concern about its ability to fill positions in time for the start of the implementation phase of the project.

Recommendation: Emphasis should be placed on filling positions in advance of the vendor start date to allow for new staff to acquire the knowledge necessary to effectively perform their

January 2014: The project was progressing well with filling project positions. Interviews and hiring for project staff positions continued in January and were planned to continue in February and March.

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responsibilities. In addition, after the vendor and project team have developed the project schedule during the implementation planning stage, the project structure and staffing levels should be reconfirmed to ensure that the project organization is adequate for successful completion of the remaining project stages. Also, it may be necessary to consider hiring outside the university or using vendor consultants to obtain resources with the necessary skill sets within the timeframe needed.

Staffing October 2015

(Open for 7 months)

Risk: Issues regarding resource availability, current workloads, and project team member attrition began growing in intensity thereby increasing risks to the successful, on-time completion of future project activities. Recommendation: An integrated program schedule should be developed which would then help highlight the risks and focus Program management attention on areas that are most vulnerable to delays from resource constraints.


Staffing

November 2015

December 2015

January 2016

Risk: The newly published integrated program schedule did not include resource estimates and allocations. As a result, it was difficult to determine how widespread and severe the staffing problems were in the various project areas. However, at that point, it was safe to say

September 2016: From January 2016 to April 2016, the Program conducted resource leveling, developed timeframes, identified milestones, and began establishing realistic dates. In addition, the Program implemented a time reporting process based on past actual data which it used to report on and make schedule adjustments.

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February 2016

March 2016

April 2016

May 2016

June 2016

July 2016


that the program was in a severe situation in several key areas. Recommendations:

1. Develop a fully resource-loaded comprehensive program schedule in order to determine the extent of the current and future staffing issues.

2. Once that schedule was completed, Program Leadership should take actions such as adjusting program timelines, focusing on only those activities that were necessary to be ready for “Go-Live,” and suspending approval of change requests until such time as the staffing resources were more stable.

3. In addition, efforts should be made to ensure that all key resources had backups with sufficient knowledge, skills, and experience to prevent a significant impact from extended absences, unexpected vacancies, and other staffing-related situations.

In May 2016, the Program received approval of its new timeline from the Board of Regents with an estimated Go-Live date to occur sometime in June 2017. In addition, the Program published its first version of a fully resource-loaded program schedule which included time extension dependencies. . In July 2016, the Program published a Program Schedule that provided greater detail than past schedules. This new schedule identified task name, duration, start date, finish date, percent complete, remaining work, status (red, yellow, green), predecessors, successors, resource names, and notes. In addition, it was clear that the program was actively using the schedule to manage its current activities. In September 2016, the Program increased the staffing in key areas such as testing, the PEO, and integrations. Also, the Program hired a HR recruitment expert to speed up the Program’s hiring process. In addition, contingency funding became available to acquire additional contractor expertise—if it was deemed necessary.

Staffing July 2017

Risk: One month after Go-Live, the ISC was operating at almost double its original staffing estimates with the difference being made up by knowledgeable consultant staff. It was

Open

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anticipated that the ISC’s staffing levels would begin to significantly decrease over the next five months. Given that the number of daily and backlog cases were significantly higher than anticipated and that there were a number of ongoing business process and configuration problems that did not yet have solutions developed or implemented, the Program was experiencing significant elevated staffing risks—without a comprehensive risk strategy in place to manage or mitigate those risks. Recommendation: UW should develop a comprehensive ISC staffing plan which should include adequate levels to: (1) analyze, develop, and implement solutions to the various problems and (2) maintain high quality ongoing ISC services to UW organizations and personnel. In addition, this plan should include pre-established service level criteria and time periods in which UW would periodically revisit the ISC’s size, functions, and workload.

Scope May 2015

(Open for 1 month)

Risk: The decision to establish the operating model for the HR/P system had the potential to increase the scope of the project beyond the support of the Workday system. The support of HR/P business processes and supporting IT, including the Workday system, was interrelated with the support infrastructure for business processes and IT in other UW areas. This presented a risk of expanding the scope of

June 2015: UW decided against expanding the scope of the HR/P Program to include the support infrastructure.

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establishing and/or modifying support processes, staff, and tools beyond what was required to support the HR/P implementation. As a result, there was a potential impact to the HR/P budget and schedule due to allocation of project resources to establish a more encompassing operating model.

Recommendation: If the scope is expanded to include the re-engineering of the university’s entire shared services operating model, it should be managed as a separate project to avoid a detrimental impact on the HR/P project.

Scope July 2015


Risk: The configuration did not appear to align with the scope defined in the requirements.

Recommendation: The RTM should be reviewed to determine if the configuration is aligned with requirements, and a process should be established to ensure consistency between the configuration and the RTM.

August 2015: The change control process was modified and was used to some extent to manage and track requirements and configuration modifications.

PEO Processes:

Change, Risk, Issue, Quality Management

February 2015


Risk: When the project was performing an analysis of the change to semi-monthly pay periods, the quality of early project deliverables needed to be considered when estimating effort and resources required to complete subsequent deliverables. The effect of deliverable quality on

April 2016: The PLT increased the PEO staffing resources in order to implement more mature project management processes. In addition, decisions and changes were managed through JIRA tickets that were then addressed in structured meetings. Quality management was improved through the:

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the success of the project would become most apparent in the areas of testing, integrations, and organizational change management.

Recommendation: All areas of the project should be evaluated to ensure that previous estimates of effort and resources remain accurate and include sufficient contingency to allow for discoveries that will occur in the remaining phases. Project stakeholders should support the project’s evaluation of effort and time required to produce quality deliverables and results.

Increased use of sign-offs by stakeholders Identification of guiding principles and

emphasizing ongoing quality improvement Introduction of standardized templates for

project deliverables Use of document management for key project

artifacts Introduction of time tracking Improved processes for change and issue

management and communications Establishment of an internal QA team to

participate in the remaining phases of BaCD

PEO Processes:

Change, Risk, Issue, Quality Management

January 2016

February 2016

March 2016

(Open for 3 months)

Risk: As the BaCD effort commenced, it became apparent that the Program’s project management practices and processes were inadequate for the tasks ahead. Recommendations:

1. The PEO adopt formalized processes for: (a) risk and issue management, which requires formal periodic risk meetings; (b) a documented and adhered-to issue-escalated process; (c) weekly time tracking and reporting; (d) active schedule maintenance, monitoring, and analysis; (e) scope and requirements management; (f) budget tracking; and (g) contract administration and management.

April 2016: The PLT increased the PEO staffing resources in order to implement more mature project management processes. In addition, decisions and changes were managed through JIRA tickets that were then addressed in structured meetings. Quality management was improved through the:

Increased use of sign-offs by stakeholders Identification of guiding principles and

emphasizing ongoing quality improvement Introduction of standardized templates for

project deliverables Use of document management for key project

artifacts Introduction of time tracking

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2. The Program should establish a formal quality control process that includes formal sign-offs by the appropriate entities of deliverables and products within each phase of the remaining workload.

3. Additional PMP certified experienced staff should be added to the PEO to support these formalized industry standard-based project management practices.

4. Specific roles should be established within the PEO for performing and monitoring the formalized processes as identified above.

5. The Program should establish clear roles and responsibilities for the PMs and PEO, including what each is responsible for, the expectations of each role, and the benefits that those clear roles have for the Program.

Improved processes for change and issue management and communications

Establishment of an internal QA team to participate in the remaining phases of BaCD

Governance

December 2013

(Open for 1 month)

Risks: Since the HR/P Program was expected to involve and affect several UW organizations that managed their own HR/P units, concerns were expressed at multiple levels with their abilities to provide timely decision-making. If the governance structure and process did not provide a mechanism for making timely decisions or if decisions were revisited, the schedule and/or budget would become affected. In addition, if too many decisions were elevated to upper levels of the governance hierarchy, the project sponsors

January 2014: The governance structure and process were updated and being reviewed by the Executive Advisory Committee and Executive Sponsors. In addition, a plan was put in place to exercise the governance process prior to arrival of the solutions vendor.

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would become overwhelmed by the number of decisions to be made which would likely have resulted in project delays.

Recommendation: The program’s governance structure should be designed to:

Allow for rapid decision-making for issues involving design and configuration

Ensure that significant issues and conflicts are raised to appropriate levels and areas in the organization

Push down to the project team and functional area representatives design and configuration decisions

Allow stakeholders to raise issues and escalate decisions, as needed, to achieve broad horizontal and vertical support for project decisions

The structure and process for decision-making should be documented in a Governance Management Plan and communicated to stakeholders at all levels of the organization. The governance process should be exercised prior to arrival of the solutions vendor to ensure a smooth decision-making process during the fit-gap stage. Adjustments can be made as necessary to fine-tune the governance process

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as it is utilized during the initial stages of implementation.

Governance October 2016

(Open for 1 month)

Risk: In October 2016, the Program’s Executive Sponsor announced her resignation and appointment to a position at another university. As a result, the Executive Sponsor role was reassigned to another member of the Program’s Executive Steering Committee. Recommendation: Regardless of the change in executive sponsorship, UW should: (1) maintain the Program’s current direction, (2) continue to emphasize its commitment to changes in its business processes and practices, (3) continue to ask probing questions of the PMO and the impacted business organizations, (4) maintain the coalition of support and commitment from all members of the Executive Steering Committee, and (5) maintain its same degree of support and collaboration from the University’s Leadership.

November 2016: Throughout his first month, the new Executive Sponsor embraced his new role with enthusiasm and grace and became an active and very engaged Sponsor and advocate for the Program. Also, the PMO was very thorough in their briefings with the new Executive Sponsor so he was well versed and up-to-date on the Program’s activities. Furthermore, the new Executive Sponsor took the initiative to attend various program meetings in order to observe first-hand the interactions of the Program team members and the business owners.

People

Organization Preparation

and Readiness

July 2015

August 2015

(Open for 2 months)

Risk: Although work continued on change management activities, the completion of some change management-related deliverables had dependencies on the completion of business processes. Yet, these change management activities did not account for the four-week extension of the configuration and business analysis phases.

September 2015: The ICM team reformed its organizational change management and readiness approaches and activities in order to incorporate changes to business processes, roles, and responsibilities of the impacted UW organizations. The ICM plan was scheduled to be released at the beginning of October 2015 and was expected to

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Recommendation: The project schedule should be re-worked to accommodate time extension dependencies.

include a revised approach for stakeholder engagement, communication, and training.


and Readiness

November 2015

December 2015

(Open for 7 months)

Risk: In November 2015, it became apparent that some activities that were thought to be either underway or complete were not or were not at the level of detail that UW would ultimately need for a successful implementation. At that point, it was also not clear what was missing and what was truly necessary for a successful “Go-Live” from an organizational preparation and readiness standpoint. In addition, it was not clear how large a “corrective action” undertaking would be involved to ensure organizational readiness and how severe that situation was. Recommendation: The PLT should analyze the current situation, develop alternatives to remedy that situation, and determine a course of action given the current state of the overall Program. This information should then be presented to the Executive Sponsors for discussion and decision-making in light of all of the other deficiencies that were being uncovered and encountered on the Program at that time.

June 2016: During the first half of 2016, the reorganized ICM Team implemented a multi-pronged approach for preparing the University for the new Workday system. First, they began providing training in the new system’s overarching concepts such as Supervisory Organizations. Next, they began providing training to business units on the new business processes and how those processes would be carried out in Workday. In addition, Readiness Teams consisting of staff throughout the University, including business owners from the downstream integrations, were established. Also, the ICM Team communicated with the Readiness Teams on what the Workday impacts were going to be and the expectation that the Readiness Teams would take the necessary steps to ensure their areas were ready for Go-Live. In addition, the Program took the following steps of: (1) adding staff to the project who had expertise in Workday, Higher Education, centralized services, and Change Management; and (2) emphasizing communicating with Executive Sponsors on the needs of the ISC.

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and Readiness

January 2016

February 2016

March 2016

April 2016

May 2016

(Open for 5 months)

Risk: The formation of the ISC was a very significant shift from UW’s model of providing decentralized HR services to a new model of centralized HR services. Even though a centralized service delivery model was behind the vision of the new Workday system, UW had not yet made the policy and procedural changes that were necessary to support a centralized HR/P model. Recommendations: UW should take the following actions: 1. Acquire outside expertise knowledgeable in:

(a) Workday or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations, (b) Higher Education, and (c) organizational change management– particularly with experience in moving from decentralized to centralized models–to work alongside and guide the ICM Team and the Executive Sponsors as they embrace the challenges ahead

2. Begin the process of helping the potentially impacted organizations, staff, and managers through the traditional steps of basic change management (i.e., engagement, communication, sponsorship, coaching, resistance management, and other such activities)

3. Increase the information sharing about how ISCs operate in other Higher Education

June 2016: During the first half of 2016, the reorganized ICM Team implemented a multi-pronged approach for preparing the University for the new Workday system. First, they began providing training in the new system’s overarching concepts such as Supervisory Organizations. Next, they began providing training to business units on the new business processes and how those processes would be carried out in Workday. In addition, Readiness Teams consisting of staff throughout the University, including business owners from the downstream integrations, were established. Also, the ICM Team communicated with the Readiness Teams on what the Workday impacts were going to be and the expectation that the Readiness Teams would take the necessary steps to ensure their areas were ready for Go-Live. In addition, the Program took the following steps of: (1) adding staff to the project who had expertise in Workday, Higher Education, centralized services, and Change Management; and (2) emphasizing communicating with Executive Sponsors on the needs of the ISC.

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institutions and in other Workday customer sites

4. Incorporate these additional activities in the Program’s re-planning effort in order to ensure adequate resources and timeframes were provided to ensure the successful transition to a centralized service model with high quality end user support

Business Processes/

System Functionality

July 2015

(Open for 1 month)

Risk: There was a risk that the delayed delivery of the business process modifications, documentation, and configuration would impact the ability of other program areas to complete their deliverables required for End-to-End testing. Additionally, the business process work for the School of Medicine was behind schedule due to insufficient resource allocation to the business process modification activity. As a result, subsequent work on integrations would also be delayed. Recommendation: The project schedule should be re-worked to accommodate time extension dependencies.

August 2015: The business process modification activity was closely tracked and managed and a plan was put in place to ensure completion in time to conduct End-to-End testing. Contingency planning was also underway, which included identifying which areas of End-to-End testing could be scheduled with a delayed start to accommodate dependent project activities.

Business Processes/ July 2017

Risk: After being operational for little over a month, it was apparent that the ISC “cases” (e.g., phone calls, emails, and in-person visits to the

Open

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System Functionality

ISC) were significantly higher than anticipated. Even though the Program had some understanding of what the problems were, UW had not yet developed a comprehensive strategy for how to best address the various problems while, at the same time, maintain high quality ISC customer service to UW organizations and personnel. Without a comprehensive strategy, UW had no all-inclusive plan or mechanisms in place to adequately address the ongoing difficulties and problems that its organizations and personnel were experiencing with the new system and its configured business processes. Recommendation: UW should develop and gain approval of a comprehensive strategy that provides: (1) a go-forward approach to significantly reduce the backlog cases, (2) accommodations for the upcoming recurring yearly events, and (3) a high level of quality customer service to UW organizations and personnel.

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Appendix C: Overview of bluecrane Approach

We began our QA engagement for the HR/P Program by developing an understanding of the program at a macro level. We started by analyzing the following three “Program Areas”:

Application


People

It is not our practice to duplicate Project Management activities by following and analyzing each task and each deliverable that our clients are tracking in their project management software (such as Microsoft Project). Rather, we identify those groups of tasks and deliverables that are key “signposts” in the program. While there are numerous tasks that may slip a few days or even weeks, get rescheduled, and not have a major impact on the program, there are always a number of significant “task groups” and deliverables that should be tracked over time because any risk to those items—in terms of schedule, scope, or cost—have a potentially significant impact on the program’s overall success. We de-compose the three categories listed above into the next lower level of our assessment taxonomy. We refer to this next lower level as the “area of assessment” level. The list of areas of assessment grows over the life of the project. The following list is provided as an example of typical areas of assessment:

Application o Requirements, Design, Development, and Configuration o Testing o Integrations o Data Preparation o Data Conversion/Cutover o Tools o Remote Data Center(s) Project Management & Sponsorship

o Schedule o Staffing o Scope o PEO Processes: Change, Risk, Issue, Quality Management o Governance o Budget o Contract Management/Deliverables Management People

o Organization Preparation and Readiness

o Business Processes/System Functionality

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o Training and Training Facilities o Stakeholder Engagement (Note: On a monthly basis, we assessed UW’s HR/P Program on each of the above bullets. During the life of the program, there were several areas in which the Program did an excellent job mitigating or managing the risks for that particular area and no risks were ever identified.)

For each assessment area within a Program Area, we document in our QA Dashboard our assessment results and any issues and/or risks that we have assessed over the last month, as well as our high-level recommendations for addressing the risks. For each area, we perform the following assessment:

Planning – is the program doing an acceptable level of planning?

Executing – assuming adequate planning has been done, is the program performing tasks in alignment with the plans the program has established?

Results – are the expected results being realized? A program that does a good job of planning and executing those plans, but does not realize the results expected by participating partners and other stakeholders, is a less than successful program. Ultimately, results are what the program is all about!

Assessed status is rated at a macro-level using the scale shown in the table below.

Assessed Status

Meaning

High Risk

High Risk: a risk that project management must address or the entire project is at risk of failure; these risks are “show-stoppers”

Risk Risk: a risk that is significant enough to merit management attention but not one that is deemed a “show-stopper”

Risk Being Addressed

Risk Being Addressed: a risk that is being adequately mitigated. The risk may be ongoing with the expectation it will remain blue for an extended period of time, or it may be sufficiently addressed so that it becomes green as the results of the corrective actions are realized

No Risk Identified

No Risk: “All Systems Go” for this item

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Assessed Status

Meaning

Not Started

Not Started: this particular item has not yet started or is not yet assessed

Complete or Not

Applicable

Complete/Not Applicable: this particular item has been completed or has been deemed “not applicable” but remains a part of the assessment for traceability purposes

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1

HRP Lessons LearnedJuly 19, 2017

ATTACHMENT 3F-8.3/211-17 11/9/17 Page 1 of 6

2

Objective and Approach

• Gather insights from individuals who participated in the HR/Payroll Modernization program in order to incorporate lessons learned into the development of the roadmap for the Finance Transformation initiative

• Interviewed sponsors

• Conducted a workshop with sponsors

• Summarized results into observations and themes

This document contains the summary observations and themes derived from interviews and the workshop and presented to sponsors on July 19, 2017

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3

HRP Insights - Summary

• Stay focused on vision for business change and intentionally drive actions that maintain alignment

• Build and maintain commitment among team members to the mission and project; promote resiliency

• Develop capacity to make good decisions as a team when under tremendous pressure (e.g., information overload, deadline, budget, political and so on)

• Establish a culture that values voice, collaboration and the courage to make course corrections as circumstances change; and the belief that together we are one team

• Provide the resources required to deliver envisioned scope on deadline; otherwise reduce scope

• Maintain UW commitment and momentum when turnover occurs among leadership or staff

• Utilize rigorous approach to project management and staff the program with resources who bring the required knowledge

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4

HRP Insights - Challenges / RecommendationsProgram Strategy, Leadership, Program Management, Implementation

Program Strategy

• Began with a business focused approach, but as leadership changed and timing narrowed, a system (technology) approach was taken. This impacted the overall effectiveness of the desired business transformation

o Many requirements were from the perspective of Central and/or how things were done currently in legacy system. A more successful program should be a customer focus(including accessibility) program

o Had the program been right-sized up front for the aggressive timeline, it may have resulted in a more ideal Phase 1 solution

Leadership

o The University needs the transformational leadership in place because the UWFT Program will be disruptive. Leadership should lead the transformation effort and not expect the Program to do it on its own, as to what happened for HRPM

o The Board and Leadership needs people to tell them things they do not want to hear with conviction and experience taking HRPM as a lesson regarding the TCO, transformation, and scope

o Changing Leadership caused significant angst, delay, rework, and loss of key staff which disrupted continuity; increasing timeline and cost

Program Management

o The shift from managing silo-ed projects to a single connected program was a major success factor in the reset

o The program picked up momentum once they adopted the Agile Methodology and worked in sprints

o Critical project management techniques were not initially adopted, such as a consolidated program-wide Risk and Issues log

o Moving into a team-like environment with Pods being co-located and embedded in the program made a positive difference

Implementation

o Readiness: Map current state processes to help define the change impact to adopt future state. Gather all IT systems and source data

o Design: Was an issue throughout the program. Processes need to be designed in an end-to-end manner

o Testing: Align testing to the requirements and business process; leverage automated testing tools. The testing approach should include trying to break the system; and introduce UAT earlier

o Prototyping: Nine prototypes helped enable a successful Go-Live. Only accomplished by having automated tools

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5

HRP Insights - Challenges / Recommendations (cont.)Campus Outreach, Change Management, Resourcing

Resourcing

o Was not properly resourced from the start, began with 70 FTEs, now at 150 FTEs

o More campus resources needed to be embeddedinto Pods earlier in the process, these resources should go back to campus iteratively

o If you want to attract and retain the best and brightest, there needs to be a plan with the capacity to retain and develop talent which comes from the top

o The majority of contributed labor was not factored into the TCO, additionally all staff should be at least 50% contributed and embedded in the program

o Each Pod should include: Campus, Project Managers, UW IT, Training and Change Management

o Need on the ground Consultants who know Workday and Higher Education not just the system

o Need clear Consultant communication and an ownership matrix should be developed

o Pair Consultant and UW staff earlier in the process for knowledge transfer

o Adequate time should be allocated for onboarding and ramp-up, should leverage the toolkit and have new hires spend ½ a day going through the it before joining their team

Campus Outreach

o Mobile deployment units should be sent out earlier

o A representative group “Admin Network” aimed at communication, which later reached over 600, needed more governance and penetration

o An education campaign focused on all of campus, if conducted earlier would have solved a lot of problems and could have exposed many people on campus who never saw a demo of Workday before Go-Live

o The classroom setting for end-user training was most successful and also acted as a testing team

Change Management

o Need a change management plan that has buy-in from leadership and is flexible enough to change as needed

o Need a question-resolution process embedded into campus early on

o Did not talk about “standardization” but found influencer units (ex. A&S, SOM) to be an example to others and talked to leadership about the cost of not standardizing

o Develop a transition team that can go to each unit to bring current state into future state

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6

HRP Insights - Challenges / Recommendations (cont.)Working w/ State, Technical Strategies, Post Go-Live

Working w/ State

o Understand the State’s requirements and constraints (old technology) that are not readily available nor documented

o Do not be afraid to pushback and explain why a proposed solution meet requirements

Technical Strategies

o Establish early on a document management methodology and train people to use it effectively

o Leverage tools and processes that reflect typical SDLC

o Automate data collection activities and leverage tools to build reports from the outset. Need tool other than Excel

o Leverage the guidelines for integrations developed during the HRPM program

o Have both functional and technical specifications for conversions well documented

o Build reports early on and leverage these to show end users the system

Post Go-Live

o When selecting the Go-Live date, also consider the physical day of the week. This coupled with the end of the academic year all had an impact on HRPM’s Go-Live and quality of conversion data

o Without the Integrated Support Center (ISC) the program would not have been successful, this needs to be scoped properly

o Did not expect ticket volume to be as high as it was the first two weeks

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Documents

HR/Payroll Modernization Program Post-Implementation Review · 2018-07-24 · HR/Payroll Modernization Program Post-Implementation Review . INFORMATION . The administration and the