AIMS This Week - May 1, 2025
WRC building services manager a fan of AIMS enhancements
When introducing new systems and processes, it’s important for employees to feel comfortable using them, including employees who might not use those systems on a day-to-day basis.
Chuck Runge, a building services manager at Wascana Rehabilitation Centre (WRC), experienced this when the finance and human resources systems were introduced in the summer of 2024, as part of the Administrative Information Management System (AIMS).
“WRC building services is on board and happy with the system’s performance,” said Runge.
He uses the finance system to approve many purchase orders for supplies, services, and occasional coding of one-off purchases up to three times a month. He appreciates access to learning resources and work standards to guide him and his team, as well as how quickly and easily he can approve invoices, check status, and confirm the time an invoice was paid.
“A requisition is created by a supervisor or admin. They make sure invoices are coded correctly. I approve it and I’m done,” Runge shared. “It’s great!”
In his role, Runge also uses the human resources (HR) system to support hiring. He likes the enhancements he’s seeing there as well.
“After I submit hire awarding, I don’t need to notify payroll, benefits or scheduling,” he said. “I get a note from HR that they’ll process the rest, and I get up-to-the-minute updates from them.”
Wascana Rehabilitation Centre is a 307-bed facility that provides medical rehabilitation programs for adults, children and for specialized long-term care in southern Saskatchewan.
User acceptance testing of time validation and scheduling
On March 17, 2025, a team of 90 employees began end-to-end testing of the time validation and scheduling system to make sure it’s ready to meet employees scheduled for releases one and two. Another round of user acceptance testing and business dress rehearsals will be conducted to support subsequent releases.
“Testing provides end-users a chance to review the system after all other types of testing have been completed,” said Fareed Somji, AIMS Project Lead. “The objective is to validate the system’s functionality and usability before it is deployed to production.”
Employee feedback provides the AIMS project team with first-hand knowledge into how the system performs for employees in different roles and within different organizations. Feedback contributes to lessons learned and frequently asked questions, which helps ensure a smoother transition for all employees.
User acceptance testing is still in progress and will be completed once test participants have successfully completed 82 per cent of their test scenarios, with an 80 per cent pass rate.
Prioritizing and triaging change requests
Testing is an important metric for determining system readiness. Much like an emergency department, the AIMS project team carefully assesses, and triages change requests based on priority and severity. Technological issues receive top priority and must be fixed before release one can proceed. An example might be a coding error that is causing shifts to be deleted after they’ve been approved, instead of appearing on the employee’s schedule.
Lower priority change requests are improvements that do not need to be resolved before a specific release date. For example, a team identifies data that should be added to standard reporting or improvements for business processes or work standards. Although important, these types of requests can be explored outside of the AIMS project as part of business operations.
Release zero pilot
When introducing a new system, some issues are difficult to see and diagnose in the test environment. To shed some light on these areas, a group of about 100 employees have gone live in the time validation and scheduling system as part of the release zero pilot. This team includes out-of-scope managers and employees, and some in-scope schedulers.
Although the pilot group are working in a live version of the system, the system is in the testing phase. System defects and other improvements are likely to be encountered by participants. These will continue to be assessed and prioritized for action and next steps.
Information and demonstration sessions
Although not formally part of testing, 1,500 employees attended information and demonstration sessions hosted over a two-week period in March 2025. These sessions provided a sneak peek of the time validation and scheduling system and an opportunity for employees to share feedback.
Additional information Sessions and supplemental learning opportunities will be made available to end-users closer to their go-live dates.