A World of Change: 6 Steps for Testing Rapid Workday Changes

Date posted
22 October 2020
Reading time
10 Minutes
Keri McWilliams

At Kainos, we have worked extensively with our customers to ensure their testing strategy is flexible and adaptable. Read on to understand the fundamental six steps needed for a Workday configuration that can handle the needs of a modern, agile workforce.  

STEP 1. Analysis

First, perform the required analysis of the change and its affects. It's easy to say, 'we know', but we have seen examples where customers end up having to spend significant resource correcting an issue that could easily have been caught with testing.

STEP 2. Make configuration changes in Sandbox

This may seem like an obvious one. Always make your changes in Sandbox. There's too much at stake to make changes directly into Production.

STEP 3. Review and Check Changes

Once you've made your changes, review and document them. It can be tempting to cut corners on documentation. Keep the change log. Review the dates. Take note of what was changed and build your test case documentation appropriately. A step-by-step test documentation will help you with less experienced testers and it helps you make sense in a few months' time of what has been changed and how to reverse it when no longer required.

STEP 4. Regression Test

Perform full regression testing. Automation is the key here being able to kick off a wide suite of tests at the click of a button and having them running whilst you work on other things can provide invaluable piece of mind. With comparison against previous executions and highlighting any differences found this is time consuming when done manually so we believe automation is the only credible answer here. Watch our Workday 2020R2: Testing Updates In A Changing World webinar for more information on how automation can help. A big consideration when making and testing rapid changes is ensuring you have the correct Workday expertise. Having a skilled Workday practitioner making the changes and involved in testing will ensure a higher success rate first time as they will be able to assess what needs changed and know what they 're looking at when evaluating the results.

STEP 5. Sign off

With your tests complete, and issues fixed, it's time to make the go/ no-go decision.

STEP 6. Release to Production

Release your changes into Production and perform some quick additional testing to make sure everything is as expected. For changes that you believe may be temporary, we 'd recommend setting a review date to check if the change is still required (maybe a rolling 3-month period?). For example, a security elevation for someone providing cover for a colleague can be re-checked and cancelled without it going unremembered and representing risk when people are back in their proper roles.

Keep in mind, even when not performing lots of rapid change, we recommend that you should regression test your Workday configuration every week. This ensures you stay on top of those weekly updates and the changes being introduced by your teams. We hope this simple six step framework will help with testing your ongoing rapid changes. As teams move from the office, to home, to the office again, as well as having numerous business as usual tweaks, it is always important to ensure that everything is working as you'd expect, and your Workday configuration is at its best for a changing world.  

About us

Here at Kainos, we have worked hard in preparation for Workday 2020R2 to thoroughly test our customer configurations. Our testing dream team executed 3.5 million tests, achieved 30 years of automated test execution time and reduced customer testing effort by 80%.

Free test assessment

We're offering a free test assessment, which will involve reviewing how your WD2020R2 testing went, and provide suggestions on how to turbocharge your approach for the next release.

About the author

Keri McWilliams