Common Platform Programme - Test Automation & Execution Services

Tender description

Summary of the work Provide a flexible team of 10 to 15 testers to work on agile projects which deliver specific products/transformations via multi-disciplinary, skilled digital teams. You’ll be adept at ensuring the quality of the digital service by testing it manually and writing automated tests covering a range of conditions. Expected Contract Length 2 years. The first SOW will be for a 3-month duration with other SOWs developed over the term. Latest start date Monday 26 June 2017 Why the Work is Being Done CJSCPP is a change programme to enable the CJS and agencies be more efficient and deliver a better service. For the first time, criminal case information will be kept together in one place. The CJSCPP is part of a wider portfolio of change being delivered by HMCTS under the HMCTS Reform Programme, affecting services in all jurisdictions. Problem to Be Solved Current CJS services are typically supported by paper and hard media based processes which are expensive, subject to frequent delay and often baffling to citizens without legal training. The CJSCPP is designed to develop efficient, proportionate and accessible digital services delivering access to justice via appropriate modern channels. Who Are the Users 1) As a citizen, view and track my case online, be alerted to changes and for the case to proceed efficiently. 2) As a prosecutor, understand case evidence to ascertain likelihood of a successful prosecution. 3) As a defence practitioner, understand the evidence of a case to best advise my client. 4) As a HMCTS admin, manage the delivery of justice services so the process is delivered efficiently. 5) As a member of the judiciary, access all relevant information so that I can make a judgement 6) As a prosecuting agency, submit evidence to provide HMCTS with relevant information. Work Already Done The CJSCP Programme has produced the technical foundations for a domain driven micro-service based back end architecture with service model architecture on the front end. These include frameworks and design patterns that new team members will be expected to worth with. Information on this work can be found here https://github.com/CJSCommonPlatform/microservice_framework and here https://github.com/CJSCommonPlatform/govuk_single_page_pdk. The business has identified approximately 35 service/service fragments to be produced and the change planning has taken place with approximately 7 of the services in various stages of completion. Existing Team The current projects all have teams in place. Each existing team comprises; a Delivery Manager, a Technical Lead, a Business Analyst, a User Researcher, a UX/HTML Designer, one or more front end and back end developers and a QA specialist. It is expected that the successful provider will augment some of these teams as well as providing Test Automation & Execution capabilities for new teams yet to be formed, either to extend the capacity on existing projects, or provide the capability for the other projects due to start during 2017. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Demonstrable experience of producing and maintaining automated checks using the programme test stack (Protractor, JMeter, RestAssured, ZAProxy)=4%. • Demonstrable experience of coding automated checks in Java and JavaScript to a high standard, following typical design patterns and good practices=4%. • Demonstrable experience of quantifying application and infrastructure quality through measures including; performance, vulnerabilities, defects and static analysis results=2%. • Demonstrable experience of providing expert exploratory testing across multiple scrum teams=2%. • Demonstrable experience of conducting Non-functional and Operational Acceptance testing=2%. • Demonstrable experience of completing all testing activities within Sprint boundaries=2%. • Demonstrable experience of collaborating with developers to push automated checks down the Automation Pyramid=2%. • Demonstrable experience of operating within a Scrum team=2%. • Demonstrable experience of providing advice and guidance to teams on what to test, where to test and how to test features=2%. • Demonstrable experience of implementing a Programme Test Approach within development teams=1%. • Demonstrable experience of working across a programme to contribute to Platform automated checks and activities=2%. • Demonstrable experience of working with Continuous Integration and infrastructure as code tools (Jenkins and Ansible on Azure)=2%. • Demonstrable experience of providing guidance to developers when issues occur utilising Event debugging tools, Dead Letter Queues, Monitoring, Alerting and aggregated logs in Kibana=3%. Nice to Haves • Demonstrable experience of CQRS and/or asynchronous systems=5%. • Demonstrable experience of Continuous Delivery in Azure=5%. Work Location Primarily Southern House, Wellesley Grove Croydon CR9 1WW and occasionally Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge Road London SE1 9HS (the "Base locations”, although some visits to other locations may be required.) Working Arrangments The supplier’s team will be required to work onsite at the base location working a five (5) day week. The Service is being delivered against the GDS Service Manual (e.g. agile delivery aligned to scrum methodology). For any work performed at a location different to that of the Base location and London (outside of the M25), all reasonable travel and expenses costs shall be met in accordance with the rates set out in the MoJ travel and subsistence policy. All expenses will require prior approval from HMCTS before being reimbursed. Security Clearance All supplier resources must Baseline Personnel Security Check (BPSS) clearance which must be dated within three months of the start date. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-baseline-personnel-security-standard for further guidance. Some roles may require SC security clearance. Additional T&Cs Any expenses shall be submitted in line with the Ministry of Justice standard Travel and Subsistence policy and agreed in advance of expenditure. Suppliers shall provide transparency to the Buyer on the rates paid to resources and any third parties in the supply chain. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Describe how will you ensure that HMCTS is supplied with high quality and appropriately skilled team specialists, whilst minimising HMCTS's effort in screening the proposed team members=4%. • Explain how you plan to retain key resources for the duration of the contract and how you can commit to meet HMCTS's continuous need for testers=2%. • Provide named individuals and CV’s to meet the initial requirements demonstrating experience of working in agile multi-vendor teams=5% • Provide three referenceable client focussed case studies where your company have provided the desired service capability; please identify the proposed team member(s) that were part of the delivery team=5% • Describe your approach to adding, replacing and rotating new team members, within a 2 week notice period, to the existing team without reducing the team’s velocity=2%. • Propose your approach for enabling digital teams, delivering capability and ensuring that knowledge transfer is conducted during handover of project outputs to the HMCTS BAU maintenance team=3%. • Describe how you intend to measure and manage quality and speed of delivery teams and individuals to ensure continuous improvement=2%. • Give examples of KPIs and SLAs that you would be prepared to commit to for this contract, including ability to provide high calibre substitutes/replacements within 2 weeks=2%. • Explain the Value Proposition; value for money, how the proposal will optimise costs, and generate savings. Demonstrate how discounts will be linked to volume and duration=5%. Cultural Fit Criteria • Explain the approach for working with multi-vendor teams across multiple projects at different locations=2%. • Explain how you will ensure the team collaborate at all levels of the project and programme delivery; between users, project team members, and management. Give examples for each team member=3%. Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 5% Price 25% Questions from Suppliers 1. Change of Common Platform Programme contact There is a new Commercial Lead - Michael Taylor. Please resend your questions to michael.taylor@justice.gov.uk 2. 1. Could you share specific composition of team and their skills sets that will be required, with approximate duration for the work packets that are already defined ? The opportunity above has defined the essential skills and desirable skills, we expect the team proposed to be skilled as such. 3. 2. Is the existing QA Team an internal HMCTS team or a 3rd Party vendor? Could you share who is the current incumbent vendor ? There are existing testers embedded in the agile teams on the programme already. 4. 4. Is current team following Scrum based development and testing approach or supplier is expected to setup the same from scratch? The outcome is for Testers to work in multiple Scrum teams across the Common Platform. 5. Currently how many work streams are in progress? And how many more are potentially being planned ? Four component parts of the Common Platform are currently under development, the programme has a significant road map of future features and components. 6. What are the different roles expected in test team and what is average experience in years for each role? Skills and capabilities are more important than years in roles. The outcome outlines the deliverables expected, each team member should be able to fulfil the outcomes while working in a Scrum team. 7. What are the current tools being used to manage work that is already done? JIRA, Confluence, Gerrit and GitHub. 8. What test management tools being used currently? None appart from JIRA 9. Are you flexible to use tools and frameworks suggested by vendor? As we notice, an automation framework has already been defined. Is the successful supplier is expected to use the same framework or they can have their recommendations suitable for the project? The tools being used are outlined in the outcome. We are not expecting to change the tooling. No automation framework has been defined, and there is no desire to build one. 10. Is it fair to assume that HMCTS will bear the licence cost related to any proposed tool? The tooling is not expected to change, where licenses are required, HMCTS bear the cost. 11. Are you OK to use Open source tools in technical solutions? the tooling for the programme is set as outlined in the opportunitiy above. 12. Should the team members be a Certified Scrum Masters? Do you prefer any sort of certifications for suggested team members? There are no requirements for Scrum Masters, this opportunity for Testers. Certifications are not listed on the opportunity above. It’s down to the supplier to identify appropriate certification. 13. What existing/new systems are or will be integrated with the NEW system being developed under CJSCP programme? Libra, Libra GoB, CMS and DARTS to date. 14. Is Performance Testing and Security testing in scope of this engagement? If yes, does HMCTS prefer any Performance testing tool and is HMCTS looking for any security testing Certifications? Yes. The tooling is listed in the outcome. We are looking specifically for vulnerability testing experience, we are not looking for penetration testing expertise. 15. Can HMCTS please clarify what all is expected under - Non-functional testing? Performance, Load, Soak, log, monitoring, alerting etc. The programme as a number of non-functional requirements which all require testing as part of in-Sprint activities. The list give is not exhaustive but is representative of expected activities. 16. What is the size of current sprints? Is it expected for suppliers to present the plan according to current sprint size that HMCTS team is following? Sprints are 2 weeks. It’s up to suppliers to plan their proposals. 17. ‘Demonstrable experience of collaborating with developers to push automated checks down the Automation Pyramid’ – Are we looking for Continuous Integration of automation scripts with code here. Please clarify? We’re looking for experience of applying the Automation Pyramid, which is a widely used principle in test automation. 18. Is UAT part of this procurement exercise? Yes. UAT is part of in-Sprint testing. 19. Would HMCTS consider a near-shore delivery ie. based out of partner’s premises in the UK ? Could any part of the delivery be made from offshore location? say for eg. performance or load testing ? No.. As mentioned in the opportunity, the Testers are to be on-site in Croydon. 20. Requirement says - Some roles may require SC security clearance. Can you please clarify what roles specifically needs to be SC cleared? Currently no testers are SC cleared. It is possible in the future that some of the components of CPP will require SC clearance to work on them. 21. Will HMCTS conduct interviews of the proposed resources as a part of screening process? There will not be an interview.There will be a “matching meeting” to test skills check lasting around 30 minutes. 22. Is the team expected to write Unit Test for development team as well? The team is expected to be involved in delivering working software, so this should not be ruled out, but there’s no expectation that unit testing would be written by just a tester. Testers should expect that they will pair with developers on a regular basis. 23. Since this is going to be T&M engagement – What kind of lean period is expected between different SOWs and is there a probability that the supplier may experience Zero utilization. We are not anticiapting lean periods between Statement of Work, or times of zero utilisation. 24. In other HMCTS opportunities published on DOS currently, maximum rates that the MoJ is ready to pay have been published. Can you advise if a day rate cap is applicable for this opportunity? No rate cap has been established. 25. Is it your expectation that each individual team member (tester) has the essential skills required? or is it a requirement for the team proposed? The skills relate to the tester not the team of testers.