When a 172-step onboarding process was stifling an HR team, the US Dept of Energy turned to Trundl
The Tools
- Jira Service Management
- Confluence
The Challenge
This Department of Energy maintains one of the fastest exascale computers in the world, capable of 200,000 trillion calculations per second. This supercomputer is used for advanced, data intensive applications in energy, advanced materials, weather prediction, physics, genetics, and artificial intelligence.
Part of exploiting this supercomputer is allowing researchers from universities to use it to advance their research. Access to the facilities, hardware provisioning, departmental introductions, and identities are highly controlled as part of using this asset.
To keep things secure and ensure all users are sufficiently trained, they had a robust onboarding process. So robust, in fact, that the Department of Energy had a 172-step onboarding process covering 6 months of steps, deliverables, and approvals.
This detailed onboarding process was managed through Microsoft Excel. With this level of detail and required information capture, it was difficult for the HR department to constantly update. Moreover, it was an HR department of one, (we’ve all been there!), and it consumed far too much of their bandwidth. So, they needed something that would reduce the number of evenings and weekends worked by this small but mighty team of one.
The Solution
Trundl proposed a Jira Service Management solution to capture and process onboarding requests, along with Confluence for contextual knowledge for requestors.
The workflow for onboarding was one of the larger workflows Trundl had worked on, requiring clear understanding (and close adherence to) to accesses, approvals, screens, conditional logic, assets, and dependent services and tasks along the journey.
Trundl set up a proof of concept replicating the most critical parts of the 172-step workflow, accounting for required groups, custom forms, approvals, identity access, asset provisioning, facilities accesses, and more. The proof of concept was tested and approved by stakeholders, followed by necessary refinements to make it a solution ready for hand-off.
The Results
The entire solution was delivered within 9 weeks, saving the department 160 hours per week in productivity.
