Research spike: Workplan and G&A linkage

[cmajel]

Background Workplan is the system that budget approvers use to plan budgets for their teams and provides leadership with regional reports on expected workload. The G&A application, and most regions, now require that grants/agreements have a link to a Workplan record.

But, we've heard that the data in Workplan records can be very speculative, particularly early in the budget cycle, and people in the G&A process see creating and linking Workplan records as an added step to their process. We've also heard that budget may be considering other tools in the future.

We want to understand

• How Workplan and G&A interact with each other now, and what data is shared when
• How Workplan and G&A should interact in the future, and what data should be shared (if any)
• Workplan's value to leadership and budget officers, and how it ties into G&A work (if at all)
• Workplan's future, and understand what a transition to a new system could mean for our work.

We'll know we're done when...

• [ ] We know if we should require a Workplan linkage in our prototype work, and what data will need to be shared
• [ ] If we need a Workplan linkage, we've identified what data should be shared when

Tasks

• [ ] Review past research and FS guides to better understand Workplan's value
• [ ] Jay identifies who we could talk to about Workplan's future
• [ ] We meet with someone who can speak to Workplan's future
• [ ] We meet with budget officers to better understand
• [ ] What else?

Open questions

• Should we also document what a budgeting system needs to share / consume from an agreements system?
• What value does leadership get from Workplan?

[cmajel]

@cmajel to reform as a research spike. Some questions here for coworking tomorrow.

[MelissaBraxton]

Some overarching Qs: What need does linking workplan to G&A serve? Who has this need? Are there alternative ways we can meet their need if we decide not to integrate workplan with the new system?

[cmajel]

Notes from cowork chat with Jay yesterday on Workplan's history

Some key takeaways:

• Usage and appreciation of Workplan varies by region. Some regions and areas of the FS use it more than others.
• Workplan helps leadership to see what workload looks like across the region. It also helps budget share with others what they have for budget so that they don't overspend.
• For many people in the G&A process like GMSs, Workplan doesn't provide them with much value; adding it as a requirement felt like an added step.
• The data in Workplan can be speculative or outdated. It doesn't touch financial systems, so it is up to individuals to keep the data up to date. And, records created early in the budget cycle can vary drastically to what actually gets funded.

[tbaxter-18f]

I think given the related #185, we have a fairly high-priority need to determine.

1. Is bringing in data from a workplan desirable?
2. If not, then we can close #185 as wontfix
3. If so, proceed with #185?

It seems like we have some conflictiing views on whether or not it's helpful that we need to resolve.

From a data/engineering standpoint, it CAN let us prepopulate some fields, but I'm not sure that's actually all that helpful to users, especially given the overwrite issues with workplans.