Lake County begins Workday test planning; targets Dec. 1 go-live with six-week hypercare

Project manager Patrice Evans updated the committee May 1 on Lake County's Workday ERP implementation timeline and risks, saying the program is moving from configuration into testing and that the county is preparing for an aggressive test schedule.

Evans said the transformation alignment and the governance charter are complete and that the team is currently finishing foundation data model (FDM) redesign and HCM configuration. The Strata implementation partner will be onsite the week of May 18 to help create testing scenarios; end-to-end testing is scheduled to begin in June and the team expects to complete testing in August, Evans said. The county is targeting a Dec. 1 go-live date. "We should be complete at the August," Evans said, and the Strata team will provide roughly six weeks of hypercare support after go-live.

Committee members asked about mitigation plans for remaining configuration risks. Evans and CIO Chris Blanding said the mitigation steps include increasing meeting cadence with workstream leads (doubling some workstream meetings) and prioritizing outstanding configuration decisions. Members also asked about post-production support; staff said the county is developing a governance-based support model that could be augmented with third-party contractors after the built-in hypercare period.

Board members applauded the progress while noting that some HCM and FDM alignment issues remain and that the project is still in a yellow status. Staff committed to return with updated testing progress and to notify the committee of any changes to the go-live target.