University of East Anglia: Design and build of website and portal using a user experience approach.

Tender description

Summary of the work Implement a robust, scalable, compliant, stable and performant Liferay 7/DXP website and portal which meets the requirements for 99 user types. This work would follow the Government Design Services "Design by Default" approach and see these user journeys defined, iterated, tested and validated and then deployed to production. Expected Contract Length 18 months Latest start date Monday 4 September 2017 Budget Range The agreed project budget is £500,000 - £700,000 (inclusive of VAT and expenses). Why the Work is Being Done Our website is our primary communication channel with 9 million sessions (visits) recorded on UEA’s main website and Portal in 2016. We wish to provide a user requirement-led website and portal experience in order to meet our needs both now and for the medium future. The rebuild needs to be completed by 28 February 2019 due to the end of current licencing agreements. Problem to Be Solved We are looking for a supplier with Liferay 7.0 skills and experience to work alongside UEA to create a website/portal which is performant and focussed on meeting a very complex set of internal and external user needs. We need a website and portal platform which will enable us to meet Vision2030, our corporate plan, by delivering strategic actions outlined in the corporate plan and ensures we can operate in an efficient and compliant way. Our new web presence will need to seamlessly interact with key corporate information systems to ensure it is performant at all times. Who Are the Users We have identified 99 different user types. Each one will need to have their requirements captured and journeys mapped as part of this project. Examples include: - Prospective students - Current students - Academic staff - Support Service staff - Partner Organisations -Businesses -Community -Parents and Teachers. These can be divided into local, regional, international markets. Critical user requirements include: - allow prospective students to find out about UEA to inform choice - ensure that current students can do anything that they need to in support of their learning, life and accommodation - allow research staff to promote their research Early Market Engagement Not applicable. Work Already Done We have completed a Discovery and Alpha Phase. During the Discovery Phase we delivered: business model canvas, feature brainstorm, stakeholder map, organisation chart, competitor analysis, prospective undergraduate timeline, high level non-functional requirements, summarised business goals and trends and risks analysis. The Alpha phase has delivered: prospective undergraduate and academic research staff personas, customer journeys, example wireframes for certain scenarios and clickable prototypes. Technical Discovery has also been completed which includes familiarisation with Liferay 7.0, integration and architecture, testing of deployment of new code and de-risk technical unknowns. These outputs will be shared with those shortlisted. Existing Team We need delivery capability to work with us to optimise team velocity and maintain quality of outcome. The in-house delivery team comprises: Product Owner x 1, Project Manager x 1, digital team x 2 and software developers x 2, plus support from Corporate Information Services management team as required. Other IT staff may be brought in for specific tasks, such as integrations with other systems (details of other potential systems will be provided to those shortlisted). In addition, you will work with external creative agency(ies) on the visual identity, front-end design elements and content creation. Current Phase Alpha Skills & Experience • Experience of delivering a successful website redevelopment of a similar size and value in the last two years. Include how this was done and the improvements in business outcomes. (8) • Experience of delivering solutions in line with Government Digital Service Standards, web industry standards and regulatory frameworks. Must follow UEA development standards and experience of secure coding standards. (5) • Experience of developing content strategies and information architectures for new websites and services. (3) • Experience of conducting user research to identify needs and synthesising high-quality user stories. (5) • Experience of creating wireframes/prototypes and iterative development of solutions through user feedback. (4) • Technical expertise of front-end, UI web development and responsive, mobile-first, web design (HTML5/CSS/JS) meeting level AA of W3C WCAG2. (4) • Experience of delivering solutions using the Liferay 7.0 platform, including portlet and ADT development. (4) • Experience of system integration, including micro-service, webservice and API architectures. (5) • Experience of creating automatable tests, and working with automated build and test tools. (4) • Ability to develop against non-functional requirements relating to performance, security, accessibly and reliability. (4) Nice to Haves • Experience of delivering solutions in a Higher Education environment, including details of integrations with other systems. (2) • Experience of form building tools. (2) • Experience of facilitating digital transformation, and evolving organisational culture towards a user-centric ethos. (2) • Evidence of further development of a customer website after go-live, with additional work packages and features introduced and the associated benefits outlined. (2) • Experience of minimising content when re-implementing a large site. (2) • Demonstrable experience of delivering large projects to budget and timeframes, where the user journeys / requirements are not identified at the outset. (2) • Demonstrate experience of delivering agile projects in sometimes non-agile environments. (2) Work Location University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, England, NR4 7TJ Working Arrangments By default we expect people facing role holders (e.g. UX designers; project control; scrum master) to be onsite 2-3 days minimum per week and to utilise collaboration tools as necessary. Other project members would be expected on site for various reasons as agreed through the project (eg. review meetings and live launches etc). Expenses should not exceed 5% of budget. We will require performance / management reviews of work in progress, quality standards and budget/backlog burn down. Security Clearance All project personnel must disclose unspent criminal convictions by confidential letter to the UEA HR team and provide proof of entitlement to work in the UK which permits work in this capacity to be checked, copied and retained by UEA, prior to working on this project. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • Value for money (we will evaluate how much of the requirement can be achieved in the time scale and for the budget) • Approach and methodology (we will evaluate how you will deliver our requirements for quality of outcome and knowledge transfer, including managing delivery against milestones) • Team structure (We will evaluate how well your proposal will compliment and align to our existing team) • Risks and dependencies (We will evaluate your assessment and recommendations to ensure efficient progress through the backlog) • Supplier capacity (We will assess your ability to scale to meet our needs and flexibility within the project) • Change management (We will evaluate your recommendations for managing change within the organisation to enable delivery of the project) Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers. (2) • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions. (1) • Share knowledge and experience with other team members. (1) • Take responsibility for their work. (2) • Reinforce agile mindset and principles into a developing organisation (1) • Can work in partnership with stakeholders with low technical expertise to understand the 'business needs'. (1) • Evidence of working with government, visitor attraction and third sector organisations, in particular higher education organisations. (2) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 10% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. Is it possible to know who did discovery and alpha ? Discovery and Alpha were undertaken by one of our incumbent IT/Website contractors. 2. Also is the incumbent bidding for beta? It is not known if the contractor involved in Discovery and Alpha will be pursuing the Beta project. 3. The brief refers to 99 different user types. Is this the correct number? To address these, they would need to be grouped/prioritised, is this the expectation? We have grouped the 99 users into 20 groups which have been prioritized. We want to ensure we meet the individual needs of each user type but understand that some users requirements will be very similar. 4. You list ‘experience of delivering solutions using the Liferay 7.0 platform’ in essential skills and experience. Will you discount suppliers who have not previously built on Liferay, even if they can justify their ability to build on similar platforms (Java-based enterprise CMSs)? We are looking for someone with Liferay 7.0 experience, scoring will  take into account how closely you match this criteria. 5. The requirements don't list visual design, and refers to creative agency(ies) on visual identity/front-end design work. Can you clarify whether you're commissioning a separate agency to design the experience? We are going to be pursuing a separate tender for design and content partners – these could be the same or different to the build partner. The build partner will be responsible for UX, architecture and navigation and will need to work collaboratively with the designer to deliver an engaging experience. 6. You mention you have identified 99 different user types. Do you have a complete list available? A complete list is available. This list will be made available to shortlisted suppliers. 7. Also, is the expectation to produce the same level of documentation e.g. user requirements and journey maps for all of them? We have grouped the 99 users into 20 groups which have been prioritized. We want to ensure we meet the individual needs of each user type but understand that some users requirements will be very similar. 8. You mention that during the Alpha phase the following was delivered: prospective undergraduate and academic research staff personas and customer journeys. We understand these would be two out the 99 user types. How long did take you to produce these research outputs (personas and customer journeys) for these two user types? Alpha phase took approximately 3 months, within this phase we were testing and refining our prioritisation model, planning processes and prototype software. We also ensured that each sprint deliverable was completed before moving on to the next sprint. We only worked on one user group at a time, completing UG students before commencement of the second group - research staff. To reduce time we anticipate Beta to operate with parallel groups running concurrently. 9. Can you describe UEA development coding standards? Our coding standards are based around standard Java. We have a document that fully describes this. The UEA coding and development guidelines document is here: https://ueanorwich-my.sharepoint.com/personal/hvx09ddu_uea_ac_uk/Documents/Website_Stability/Tender/UEADevelopment.docx?d=wac1b9b7c9f694644be6f48a5cea77a3c 10. Can you clarify Question 5 of the Nice to Haves; specifically what is meant by "minimising content"? Do you mean reducing / editing current content? (Part 1 of Answer) The current website is about 4 years old and a lot of the old archive material content was migrated from the old content management system. We know that the website is currently being used a lot as an archiving/ storage system. Some of this content needs to be kept and made publicly available to meet the requirements of research projects and collaboration. There is other content and interim pages that we anticipate as no longer being required and hence will need to be removed. 11. Can you clarify Question 5 of the Nice to Haves; specifically what is meant by "minimising content"? Do you mean reducing / editing current content? (Part 2 of Answer) Project will include removal of content and assessment of what users want and how best to meet that need. We do not want to copy current content across, as what happened with the previous migration. Only data that meets customers needs should be migrated, in the format that they want it. 'Minimising content' will mean some reducing, some editing or producing some new content to better meet users need. Intention is to have content partner on board that will look at how we write our copy and other types of content that may work for us. 12. The requirements in the brief do not list any visual or UX design skills, and refers to a creative agency(ies) on visual identity and front-end design work. Please can you clarify whether you are commissioning a separate agency to design the experience, and whether you’re just looking for a build partner to implement this on the Liferay platform? (Part 1 of Answer) We are looking for a visual identity creative agency to help us implement the design. That designer could be the same agency as for the build or it could be someone different. The build partner will need to work collaboratively with them. We did not want to limit the build agency to one that did not have design capability nor engage a design agency that did not have experience of build. We will therefore be running a separate exercise for the design partner. 13. The requirements in the brief do not list any visual or UX design skills, and refers to a creative agency(ies) on visual identity and front-end design work. Please can you clarify whether you are commissioning a separate agency to design the experience, and whether you’re just looking for a build partner to implement this on the Liferay platform? (Part 2 of answer) They may be different, they may be the same but we would want the build agency to be instrumental in the UX architecture and how we structure the content. The design agency will be principally focussed on how we present this to the audience. 14. What are the current form building tools? We are currently using the internal Liferay form building tools available in Liferay 6.2. 15. Can you define accessibility in question 10: Ability to develop against non-functional requirements relating to performance, security, accessibility and reliability? The essential skills and experience section of the opportunity lists a requirement of minimum level AA W3C WCAG2 - this should be taken as the definitive answer. 16. Did you work with an agency partner on the alpha? Yes we did. We worked with a partner around the stability issues and some other work around the course catalogue. That piece of work has continued with the incumbent agency to get us to this point where we are now going out to tender for this larger piece of build work. 17. Is there any possibility of getting access to the portal / logged in environment? Unfortunately, due to security and data protection constraints, this is not possible. 18. Why did you choose Liferay? Liferay was chosen 4 or 5 years ago. From a technical perspective it was chosen for its flexibility, it married well with the kind of requirements that the business had at the time and was competitively priced. All of these things came together to make it the choice at the time.We moved from Polopoly which was a publishing, content management system. Digital Marketing felt that from a technical perspective moving to Liferay was a natural step given that UEA operates with lots of content. 19. Will you categorically discount any suppliers who have not previously built on Liferay, even if they can justify their ability to build on very similar platforms (Java-based enterprise content management systems)? We require a supplier to provide knowledge and experience of the Liferay 7.0 platform.