Assessment Application Build for PTML/Doctoral

Tender description

Summary of the work SLC is looking for a Supplier who is a subject matter expert in Digital Service Delivery to support the lifecycle phases in the delivery of its PTML/Doctoral programme (described elsewhere). The Supplier must provide as required specialist capability in line with GDS Digital by Default Standards, to support Discovery/Inception activity. Expected Contract Length 3 Months, plus an optional 3 month extension Latest start date 24/4/2017 Budget Range Between £300,000 and £900,000. For the purpose of evaluation, it is assumed that there will be a work package duration of 120 working days with estimates based on the following mix of roles: for inception 1 Delivery/Scrum Manager, 1 Senior TDA, 2 Design Specialists (6 week estimate); for the remaining period (Alpha) 1 Delivery/Scrum Manager, 1 Senior TDA, 3 QAs, 3 BSAs, 9 Developers. Separate day rates for each role should be supplied. Statements of Work to be agreed as required. Why the Work is Being Done During FY 17/18, an SLC Programme of work needs to deliver new products in the form of Part Time Maintenance Loans and Doctoral in line with the GDS Standards and Technology Code of Practice. These demand new supporting features and capabilities to be produced including complex, large elements such as Means Testing and Post-Liability Change of Circumstance. Problem to Be Solved Whilst SLC has a core team of resources required to deliver the Programme of work it also requires an expert professional Supplier to provide specialist services and capabilities to support the delivery of specific short term outcomes. Outcomes will cover all areas of the delivery of digital services in line with GDS design. Specific outcomes will be agreed case by case with the selected Supplier during the contract period via individual Statements of Work. Who Are the Users As a internal assessor within SLC I need to, on behalf of applicants, ascertain eligibility and entitlement for part-time maintenance loans or doctoral products, so that the appropriate loan and fees are issued in support of study. Early Market Engagement No early market engagement has taken place with suppliers for this requirement. Work Already Done To date SLC has created a programme of work which has established high level requirements for PTML/Doctoral. SLC has estimated indicative effort and associated timelines with preferred product launch dates. There will therefore be several projects to take through each phase of the digital lifecycle (Discovery, Alpha, Beta, Live) which will be planned over the coming months and may run in parallel. Consequently, there will be peaks and troughs where the mix of skills and volume of resource will need to blend and be flexible to meet programme demands as required. Existing Team The team is a multi-disciplinary team made up largely of developers, testers and business analysts supported by a product owner, technical and business architects, DevOps, project management and test consultants.The Supplier will work in a mixed team of full time SLC staff and other suppliers. There is an incumbent supplier who will continue to be in place through the duration. All parties involved in the delivery are expected to operate in a collaborative manner while adopting the agile processes and working practices already established within the team. Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • The Supplier must evidence ability to provide the full range of skills across the relevant roles for each phase of an Agile project in order to deliver successful digital outcomes. • Resource provided must have the ability to elicit and inform solution design, solution architecture, quality assurance and project planning etc. • The Supplier must be able to demonstrate with evidence, their experience of and ability to provide resources capable of working in an environment with a core focus on user experience. • Resource provided must be skilled in the use of techniques and practices to elicit user needs and continually improve and optimise the user interaction. • Integrate into existing teams/processes with minimal disruption, drive existing complex architecture, balancing competing demands of challenging delivery schedules with effective management of technical debt, achieving key strategic objectives. • Demonstrate experience of operating agile at scale and effectively prioritise and manage significant backlogs of work across a number of Agile delivery teams, including knowledge sharing/transfer. • Demonstrate experience of operating agile at scale and effectively prioritise and manage significant backlogs of work across a number of Agile delivery teams, including knowledge sharing/transfer. • Demonstrate experience of working on systems heavily integrated into a complex legacy estate involving heterogenous platforms and different delivery methodologies. • Demonstrate experience of delivering solutions to the public sector in complex policy driven environments. • Demonstrate track record in operating in a DevOps culture helping to deliver effective Continuous Delivery, infrastructure automation, test automation and application monitoring leading to tangible business and customer benefit. • Be able to provide resources with knowledge or experience of Test Driven Development or a similar methodology • Must be able to provide resources with experience of working within an agile development team and strong communication skills and the ability to work as part of a team • Demonstrate, experience and challenges with particular focus on exposure to patterns such as REST, event-sourcing, CQRS and dealing with orchestration and consistency issues in such an architecture. • Demonstrate with evidence a depth of skill in a range of technologies including Java, DropWizard, MongoDB and RabbitMQ, also in adoption of new technologies (eg Clojure) • Provide resources with experience of at least one Object Oriented programming language (preferably Java) • Provide resources with knowledge or experience of a Functional Programming language (preferably Clojure) • Provide resources with experience of working with JavaScript and/or JavaScript libraries (e.g. ReactJS) • Provide appropriate breadth and depth in the following skills:- Knowledge or experience of RESTful APIs, Microservices, Message Queuing (e.g. RabbitMQ), automated test frameworks and Pair Programming • Provide resources with knowledge of relational and non-relational database systems (e.g. MongoDB) Work Location 100 Bothwell Street, Glasgow. G2 7JD McMullen Road, Darlington. DL1 1RW Working Arrangments You should set out how you will maintain the availability of services over time, and your ability to respond to an immediate surge in requirements. SLC reserves the right to both extend and shorten the service provision period subject to discussion with the preferred supplier(s). The team is expected to work across multiple sites as required. Expenses will conform to SLC policies. Relevant Supplier team members are expected to be on site 5 days per week. Security Clearance All Supplier resources must meet the Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS/DS) Additional T&Cs Proposed individuals who are non British/EEA nationals must either be in possession of leave to remain with no restrictions on their time to live/work in the UK or their leave to remain must be valid for the duration of this award and permit work in this capacity. Monthly financial reporting reconciled to a SFIA skill matrix. Monthly expense reconciliation. Fortnightly and Monthly progress reporting against planned deliverables and other balanced scorecard measures. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • The Supplier must confirm that it will: • adhere to Agile principles, align to GDS Digital By Default Service Standards, and fully engage with the Team Activities detailed in this document (15%). • provide evidence of a track record of building complex microservice and event based architectures (15%). • provide evidence of its ability to integrate into existing teams and processes with minimal disruption (10%). • provide evidence of operating agile at scale and ability to prioritise and manage significant backlogs of work across a number of Agile delivery teams, including knowledge sharing/transfer (15%). • provide evidence of working on systems heavily integrated into a complex legacy estate involving heterogenous platforms and different delivery methodologies (10%). • provide evidence of its responsiveness to client demand and the appropriate flexibility in delivering solutions to the public sector in complex policy driven environments (10%). • provide evidence of operating in a DevOps culture to deliver effective Continuous Delivery, infrastructure automation, test automation and application monitoring leading to tangible business and customer benefit (5%) • provide evidence of the required skillset detailed in the Essential Skills and Experience for all team members, or across the team as a whole, as appropriate (20%). Cultural Fit Criteria • Give details of management processes and mitigations for poor service delivery, staff handover, turnover, quality maintenance and corrective actions. • Describe how good performance is incentivised to ensure milestones are delivered on time. Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 50% Cultural fit 10% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers 1. Assuming "3 BSA requirement" stands for Business Analysts, why are these roles not required during the Inception phase? SLC has some capability for BSAs to support the inception phase which reduces this need in inception however it could be possible for supplier BSAs to take part in inception if available and beneficial. 2. It is stated: "that for inception 1 Delivery/Scrum Manager, 1 Senior TDA, 2 Design Specialists (6 week estimate); for the remaining period (Alpha) 1Delivery/Scrum Manager, 1 Senior TDA, 3 QAs, 3 BSAs, 9 Developers. Is the inception phase going to be for 6 weeks, in which case team required for Alpha phase will be on-boarded 6 weeks later from start of inception with the exception of 1 Scrum Manager and 1 Senior TDA"... Who will start from Inception and continue in Alpha phase? The inception phase is estimated at 6 weeks and the Alpha team will be onboarded after this. Continuity of the Scrum Master and Senior TDA is required. 3. What is the split of 9 developers between Java and Devops? All developers are Java developers. DevOps capabilities within the team are needed by all developers to support Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment and Continuous Monitoring throughout the development process. 4. What is the split of 3 QA requirement between manual and automationtesters? All QAs are expected to be able to perform manual testing and engage in automated testing. 5. The notice states that the team is expected to work across multiple sites.Can you indicate the number, location of these sites and anticipated typeof work to be carried out at them? There are currently two sites, Glasgow and Darlington, where this work may take place. There is no differentiation between the activity in those sites and the teams operate with a similar configuration and with similar working practices. 6. The notice states that "all parties involved in the delivery are expectedto operate in a collaborative manner while adopting the agile processes and working practices already established within the team." Can you provide any documentation w.r.t to SLC/Partner established working practices? Working practices follow a general agile approach operating with a high degree of collaboration to work through user stories and engage in standard rituals like daily standups, pairing and retrospectives. No document outlining the working practices in detail will be provided. 7. Will SLC provide laptops to supplier team members or are suppliers to make their own arrangements? Supplier team members will be provided with SLC Corporate IT Equipment for the assignment. 8. The notice suggests a closing date for applications to be the 7th April. Toclarify, is this the date for initial on-line responses (evidence) to besubmitted? Will an ITT or RFQ be issued to short-listed suppliers toprepare a detailed proposal? if so, can you advise the date for finalproposal submission? 7th of April is the closing date for online submissions. Suppliers will then be evaluated and a maximum of 5 will be invited to attend a presentation session. Presentation sessions are currently planned for 18th/19th April and suppliers will be given as much notice as possible. 9. Can you please indicate the size and make-up (roles) of the SLC core teammentioned in the notice under "Any Work that's already be done" and if they are SLC staff or supplier source. The existing team is made up of about 45 team members covering the roles described and is approx 65% supplier and 35% SLC staff members. 10. Would SLC be open to the possibility of the supplier working offsite? It would not be possible for the supplier to work offsite for this particular contract given the short timeframes and early stages of the project (inception / alpha). 11. The notice indicates that supplier staff must be either British/EEANationals or appropriate Work Permit holders. Is there scope for anyoff-shore resource element within this project? There is no scope for off shore resource for this particular contract given the short timeframes and early stages of the project (inception / alpha). 12. The notice indicates that supplier staff must be either British/EEANationals or appropriate Work Permit holders. Is there scope for anyoff-shore resource element within this project? There is no scope for off shore resource for this particular contract given the short timeframes and early stages of the project (inception / alpha). 13. Are you able to advise how the development operation will be split betweenthe two locations, Glasgow and Darlington? Has the front end technologybeen decided (i.e. the tender mentions ReactJS as an example but is thatthe chosen technology?) The division between Glasgow and Darlington has not confirmed at this stage. This initial engagement will likelybe based in Glasgow, however flexibility is required and it should be assumed that staff may be required to work on either site as project demands dictate The front end is currently written in a combination of a self created JavaScript framework, KnockoutJS and ReactJS. The decision has been made to move fully to ReactJS moving forwards. 14. Would SLC be open to staff working in a dedicated area in our own officesin central Glasgow, rather than trying to find space in SLC's officescurrently? Due to the need to work with members of SLC staff and those from other suppliers, the requirement is for the team to be based inf SLC offices. 15. Does SLC consider that any staff working on this project should beconsidered as falling under the scope of IR35? It is envisaged that this will be contracted out service agreement. Therefore services sit outside of IR35 scope. 16. The budget range states it has been estimated 6 weeks for inception withthe remaining period for Alpha. However other parts of the requirementindicate you require support for any phase. Is this requirement (3+3months) to support Discovery/Inception and Alpha only, or for any phase? While we envisage the work packages for the assignment to be Inception and Alpha, we need the skills available to flex across the lifecycle should it prove necessary. 17. What degree of flexibility is there in the "general agile approachoperating with a high degree of collaboration" for the team toself-organise, define their ways of working, and continually inspect andadapt? Similarly, will the team be empowered to adapt the deliveryframework as needed? The supplier team will exist within a larger existing team comprising SLC staff and other suppliers which has an established agile methodology. The team is empowered and expected to continually improve their ways of working, however changes would need to be agreed across the wider team, agreed by the team members across all involved parties rather than on an individual supplier basis. Where changes impact other teams or departments in SLC they'd need to be agreed with those impacted. 18. Integration with legacy systems is mentioned, can you provide anymoredetails on the nature of these integrations (APIs, feeds, message busesetc.)? Is there any legacy code that will need to be directly incorporatedin new components developed? Integration will be required with a range of SLC systems. The main mechanisms are APIs (mainly Rest/JSON), via tables in Oracle databases and via queues (Rabbit and Oracle). For the most part the systems being interfaced with have been developed by and are supported by teams within SLC. It is not anticipated that any legacy code be directly incorporated in the code being developed. 19. Can you provide any more details on tooling and technologies used forinfrastructure and deployment The following tooling and technologies are used for infrastructure and deployment: - GitLab for source control - GoCD for automated builds and continuous deployment - All deployments are built as RPMs using Redhat Package Manager - Ansible or Capistrano and Chef for configuration management and deployment. 20. In the section "Who the users are ..." you mention "As a internal assessorwithin SLC ..". Can you confirm that the service to be built is purelyinternal facing (i.e. there is not a public facing aspect) and thereforethat user research will be constrained to affected SLC staff? There is no public facing aspect to the system being developed. The system being worked on is primarily used by internal SLC operations staff and potentially oursource partners carrying|out a similar role on SLCs behalf. User research would be based around these groups and project stakeholders.