Creating a Test Plan for Workday Updates

When you prepare for Workday's biannual updates, are you giving testing the consideration and planning it deserves? After all, all the bells and whistles in the world won't amount to much if they aren't functioning properly.

We recommend that the focus of the 5-week release preparation window should be to verify that you see the expected behavior and outcomes in the areas that are critical to your business. While some customers may choose to review and uptake new features during the release preparation window, those activities are outside of the scope of release testing. While there may be times when your business circumstances warrant considering enabling new features as part of the feature release process, be strategic about what you choose to include and test it thoroughly.

During the release preparation window, we recommend that you focus your testing efforts on:

Integrations

Run and review output from critical integrations before you begin any testing that may change the output, such as hires, terminations, transfers, and so on. Workday offers integration testing advice on how to perform your testing.

System Data Validation

Validate your existing system data.

Critical Business Processes

Test your critical business processes to confirm the processes and results are as expected.

Critical Custom Reports

Run your critical custom reports and review for any changes.

If you are a newly live customer, we recommend you repurpose your User Acceptance Test (UAT) plan/scenarios from your initial deployment project for the first feature release test cycle. You probably don't need to complete every scenario in the UAT plan. Use it as a basis to determine the critical processes that you want to validate in Preview before the feature release delivers to Production.

Customers who have been through feature release testing before can reuse the test plan/scenarios you used for the last feature release testing cycle. Release testing teams should revisit their plans after each feature release to determine if there are areas that need more or less coverage.

ERPA is Here to Help

No matter whether this is your first time going through a Workday update, or your twentieth, having a testing plan in place will ensure a smoother experience. Not sure where to being or how to run the necessary tests? Just fill out the contact us form below; we'd love to help.