The Workday Student implementation organized by the UASYS Project One team (Project One Team) kicked off in Fall 2021 with an initial UA Little Rock Workday Student Core team (Core Team) consisting of 24 primary leads across the institution with 22 additional operational and technical subject matter experts (SMEs). Over the past 15 months, the Core Team has grown to incorporate 3 additional leads and SMEs from the UA Clinton School. A separate Advising Working Group, consisting of 33 members, will begin working in Spring 2023 to configure all of UA Little Rock, UA Bowen Law, and UA Clinton School programs of study and their respective academic requirements.
Since the project kicked off, the Core Team has completed 288 Project One tasks in full and on time. These tasks have ranged from simple surveys to detail how current business processes leverage Banner data, to creating extensive data extracts from the Banner database. These efforts will prepare data and business processes for configuration within the Workday Student test environment.
Currently, the Core Team is collaborating with the Project One Team in the Architect & Configure phase of the project. This phase provides the opportunity to take the information provided in previously delivered tasks and ask our teams questions to confirm their understanding of how Workday Student should be configured to meet business needs. Additionally, this phase will provide clarification about limitations of the platform and identify business process gaps that will require resolution. Finally, this phase will afford our institution more 1:1 time with the Project One Team to ensure our needs and interests are being considered.
The Architect & Configure phase is scheduled to run through December 2023. However, end-to-end testing will begin for Recruiting & Admissions and Academic Foundations (course catalog, academic unit structure, programs of study) in early September 2023. Student Records, Academic Advising, Financial Aid, and Student Financials will begin end-to-end testing December 2023 through January 2024. Once the Project One Team finalizes the details of the end-to-end testing schedule and testing framework, the Core Team will be engaging the campus to identify testers who represent all institutional populations (students, faculty, staff, administration).
In the meantime, campus constituents are encouraged to track updates, submit questions and/or concerns about Workday Student, and review the latest project timeline and team directory via the new webpage created by the Workday Institutional Change Manager and the Office of Communications. The aim is to have a centralized location for informing the campus about the progress of Workday Student implementation and to provide a space to collect information for training needs and to address any misconceptions about the project and Workday Student’s capabilities.
