Cloud Migration DevOps And QA / Testing Support Services

Tender description

Summary of the work Design and automate the provision of highly available implementations of key infrastructure components in a cloud environment. Creation of destructive testing frameworks simulating common cloud failure scenarios, particularly around data storage and message brokers to support migration to a commodity cloud platform. Requires two DevOps engineers and testing engineer/ developer. Expected Contract Length Contract for up to 2 years - initial SOW for approximately 4 months Latest start date 03/01/2017 Why the Work is Being Done In order to ensure that this key DWP application is able to support the scaling and availability requirements, it is being re-engineered for resilience and to allow it to operate in a commodity cloud hosting environment taking advantage of on demand compute resources to provide a reliable, responsive service in a cost effective manner. Problem to Be Solved The scaling and availability goals for the application have led to a strategy of commodity cloud hosting. Current infrstructure design and deployment methods do not translate to commodity cloud environments and need to be redesigned, agreed and implemented. Who Are the Users Universal Credit Claimants will use the the system to mange and progress their claim online. DWP Job Centre and Services Centre Agents will use the system to perform their roles in support of the Universal Credit Applicants. Work Already Done A proof of concept of concept and some destructive testing have been performed. Existing Team The supplier will be working as a part of a multi-discipline team dedicated to the work to migrate the service to a commodity cloud platform. This team consists of internal DevOps, QA, network engineers and delivery / project managers. The team is 10 strong and follows agile processes to prioritise and manage the activities. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Experience designing and implementing resilient, highly available configurations of infrastructure components 8.00% • Experience of automation of cloud deployments and developing infrastructure as code using terraform. 8.00% • Experience creating destructive testing frameworks including the use of Jepsen to simulate failure scenarios 8.00% • Experience of cloud migrations of large microservice architectures 5.00% • Two (>3 years’ experience) DevOps engineers and testing engineer/ developer skilled in Terraform, puppet, github, bash, python, java, Mongo, ActiveMQ, jepsen, microservice architectures, AWS/ other commodity cloud environments 7.00% • Experience of aligning activities with other parallel work streams, ensuring quality standards are maintained 4.00% Nice to Haves • Have experience of working within DWP or a comparable organisation within the last 3 years 3.00% • Ability to provide technical leadership in multi-supplier team environments. 3.00% • Have capability to augment resources using a remote model (i.e. not at a DWP location), and have capability to deliver with compliance to ISO27001 standards 3.00% • Experience working with AWS 3.00% Work Location London Working Arrangments On-site in London office for the majority of the time with some scope for remote working. The collaborative nature of the team means that face to face interaction and presence at daily stand-ups is essential. Security Clearance Initial SOW does not require SC clearance, however should be prepared to undergo SC clearance should this become necessary for future phases of the activity. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Please provide details of situations where your resources have delivered DevOps and testing engineering / development capability within an existing multi-discipline team using agile methodologies. 5.00% • What experience do you have delivering major cloud migration projects for a comparable customer. Please clarify how your resources added value, delivery focus and technical leadership. 5.00% • How have you ensured that you gain, at pace, a detailed understanding of the service and project requirements to allow rapid, full involvement in design and decision activities. 5.00% • Describe your processes for identification of risks and dependencies and the approaches to manage them 3.00% Cultural Fit Criteria Request 2 examples of similar projects that you have been involved in that demonstrate ability deliver with core DWP values (full question will be detailed in proposal) 5.00% Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 75% Cultural fit 5% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. The Essential Requirements weightings have been amended as follows: •Experience designing and implementing resilient, highly available configurations of infrastructure components 8.00%•Experience of automation of cloud deployments and developing infrastructure as code using terraform. 9.00%•Experience creating destructive testing frameworks including the use of Jepsen to simulate failure scenarios 9.00%•Experience of cloud migrations of large microservice architectures 5.00%•Two (>3 years’ experience) DevOps engineers and testing engineer/ developer skilled in Terraform, puppet, github, bash, python, java, Mongo, ActiveMQ, jepsen, microservice architectures, AWS/ other commodity cloud environments 9.00%•Experience of aligning activities with other parallel work streams, ensuring quality standards are maintained 4.00% 2. Has DWP evaluated using the PaaS for government, instead of building its own? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/platform-as-a-service/platform-as-a-service This would reduce the need for DevOps and QA as it is an already accredited platform. All hosting options have been considered in the context of the application architecture, CI / CD maturity, security requirements and integrations with other DWP and external systems. The conclusion of these deliberations is that for this iteration of the hosting journey, an IaaS solution within a commodity cloud allows the project to meet its scaling obligations whilst continuing to develop its capability to leverage a PaaS solution. 3. We have all the necessary skills and qualification including large Public sector relevant Cloud Migration and DevOps projects apart from Jepsen experience; although we have lots of experience with similar tools including Chaos Monkey for Fault injection and failure simulation. Would this exclude us from the bidding process? Jepsen experience is necessary for this engagement. 4. Are you specifically looking for experience using Terraform and Jepsen or will you consider staff who have experience with similar tools and would be trained at the suppliers expense in your tools, prior to January 2017? Terraform and Jepsen experience are required for this engagement. 5. In terms of infrastructure providers will you be using any of the following? Google Cloud platforms, Openstack, Amazon web services, Barmetal, Microsoft Azure We are planning to use AWS 6. Will the project be operating in a true Agile “scrum” delivery approach or will it be a hybrid approach broken down into releases comprised of multiple sprints? We use a hybrid project management process due to multipe external depencies, internal delivery is, however, agile. 7. Can you confirm the Test Frameworks to be executed for the implementations will be required to target functional scenarios as well as non-functional/operational scenarios? Yes 8. In order to automate continuous testing frameworks there will be a solid requirement for Test Automation Tools. Which tool sets are available or preferred? The tools we are using are jepsen, j-meter, j-unit, cucumber and selenium. 9. Can you please elaborate on this specific requirement? “Experience designing and implementing resilient, highly available configurations of infrastructure components” Have you fully defined your non-functional requirements as per the business criteria. If so at what level are these represented? Yes we have an agreed set of NFRs focussing on availabilty and response times. 10. Will the cloud/infrastructure supporting the application(s) be heavily reliant on multiple APIs requiring constant configuration updates throughout delivery? Yes, we need to manage the configuration using multiple APIs 11. Regarding security and compliance how will you be approaching this per implementation or release? We have a continuous accreditation process managed by our in-house security team. 12. Will you be aligning to Puppet to help make security and compliance inherit and automatic? Yes 13. Test Environments will be key to the success of the automated frameworks with particular emphasis on the test data to aid the process. Can you please confirm if the targeted test environments will be virtualised, full e2e integration or stubbed out at various integration points? We have both, full e2e test environments and stubbed environments used at different points in the test cycle. 14. In terms of Test Management can you please confirm which tool set will be available to manage the QA delivery element i.e. HPe ALM, JIRA, Test Complete, Zephyr? We use JIRA for all elements of managing the agile delivery - tests are executed using tools such as jepsen, j-meter, j-unit, cucumber and selenium. 15. Will you be using Jenkins to provide the continuous integration mechanism for cloud deployments occurring several times a day? Yes with different cadences depending on the environment being released to. 16. Will you be using Puppet to define your common coding language and control the schedule/change from Git or Jenkins? We use all three tools. 17. In what capacity are you intending to use Terraform to safely and predictably make changes to infrastructure? We are using terraform for idempotent changes in the infrastructure unless destroy and rebuild is appropriate. In addition, the same templates are used for non-production environments allowing changes to fully tested. The infrastructure code has been divided into components to allow changes to be made with limited impact. 18. How will you be aligning your Quality standards across the DWP QA and Dev strategies/policies? Our project is fully integrated with department policy and strategies. 19. We have available test engineers who match your profile well, however we don’t currently have any DevOps engineers available. Would you be willing to consider single CV applications? No we need all skill sets detailed to support this outcome to be provided by a single supplier.