CON18-090 Cloud Migration Programme DevOps Scrum Team 1

Tender description

Summary of the work The work will involve implementing solutions designed by a team of solution architects on one or more foundational elements, such as: - Accounts and provisioning - Security services and tooling - Change pipelines and configuration - Performance and health Expected Contract Length Up to 2 years. The FCA is expected to commit upfront to one statement of work (SOW1) for 6 months. Latest start date Tuesday 14 August 2018 Budget Range The FCA may be willing to commit up to £600,000 for a six month SOW1 Why the Work is Being Done The FCA is migrating a number of big data and analytics applications to the cloud as part of their long term strategy. The organisation has an established Cloud Migration Programme (CMP) which is leading this activity. The cloud is expected to provide cost effective scalable compute resources and allow the FCA to migrate away from their physical data centres. As the contract for the current data centre expires in 2021, an enterprise cloud offering needs to be in place before then and all existing applications migrated. Problem to Be Solved AWS services need to be deployed with wrappers to provide an enterprise class service offering which adheres to FCA security controls and regulatory controls. Sensitive data will also be held on the cloud platform and this needs special provisioning. Who Are the Users As a user, FCA staff use big data and analytics applications (hosted in the cloud) in order to support the FCA's mission to regulate the UK's financial market for all who use financial services. Early Market Engagement Not applicable Work Already Done Work has started on the "industrialisation" of AWS cloud services. The new DevOps Scrum team will be joining existing Scrum teams in taking responsibility for the delivery production-ready technical components. Existing Team Mixed team of FCA employees and contractors and various suppliers working together. CMP DevOps Scrum Team 1 will be expected to collaborate with all of the above. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Knowledge and experience in operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (essential) • Knowledge and experience in programming languages, such as Bash/Shell Scripting (essential), Python (essential), Ruby (essential) • Knowledge and experience in build, such as Cloud Formation (essential), Terraform, Sceptre, Grunt, Packer, Make • Knowledge and experience in configuraiton management/ provisioning, such as Chef (essential), Ansible, Vagrant • Knowledge and experience in source code management, such as Git (essential) • Knowledge and experience in continuous integration, such as Jenkins (essential), TeamCity, Visual Studio • Knowledge and experience in package management, such as Nexus (essential), Spacewalk (essential), Satellite Nice to Haves • Track record with using Security Tooling, such as Wazuh, Suricata, Qualys, Kaspersky, ClamAV • Track record with using Data and Analytics systems, such as Redshift, Cloudera, Snowball, Tableau, API Gateway, Oracle • Proven experience of working in an agile development environment in last 3 years Work Location The work will take place in FCA offices in Stratford, London Working Arrangments The FCA expects the supplier to bring a "ready made" SCRUM team that can be plugged alongside the existing SCRUM teams. The FCA expects that the team to work onsite 5 days a week, 8 hours a day exclusive of lunch. The FCA would expected the Supplier to provide at least 5 qualified professionals working on this engagement. Any issues and escalations shall be handled by a nominated Supplier account manager, who will be provided free of charge for the duration of this engagement. Security Clearance Resources should be willing and capable of undergoing SC security clearance, which will be required as part of this engagement. Additional T&Cs Day rates submitted shall be inclusive of all travel and subsistence expenses to any location within the M25, and all necessary insurances. The preferred supplier will be expected to sign the standard CMP ethical wall letter. The suppliers' essential and nice-to-have skills will be evaluated on the basis of 0, 1, 2 and 3. Suppliers who do not achieve a minimum of 2 ("meets requirements") on one or more essential skills will be disqualified. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • Approach and methodology • Risks and dependencies • Team structure • Ability to provide high-quality individuals • Value for money Cultural Fit Criteria • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers • Take responsibility for their work • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions • Share knowledge and experience with other team members Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 10% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. We have a specialist who would lead our team but he is on holiday from 06/08 until 21/08. Would this rule him out? The FCA will not be able to proceed with suppliers whose entire proposed team is not available to start on the 14/08. However, we recognise that notfive team members may be available on the 14/08, therefore individual absences will not be a ground for exclusion. As per the DOS2 advert, a mandatory step for s suppliers is to attend a presentation session. The FCA will expect all key members of the team (ie engagement lead) to attend. The FCA cannot commit to a date for the supplier presentations, but they are likely to be in the first weeks of August. 2. Can you clarify if your budget is inclusive or exclusive of VAT? The budget is exclusive of VAT and should be viewed as an estimate. The final maximum acceptable price, as well as final SOW1 duration, will be confirmed during the second stage of the procurement. 3. How many existing Scrum teams will the DevOps team need to support? There are four existing DevOps Scrum teams and the new team will work alongside them on their own deliverables. 4. This looks like a development team focused DevOps engagement, how engaged are the security, infrastructure and operations team in delivering the outcomes of this opportunity? Security and Ops are involved in the scrum teams 5. Is it acceptable to use more than one project example in questions requiring multiple skills to be demonstrated? Yes, it is acceptable and we encourage bidders to use a variety of examples, even within a single question. Bidders should however remember to adhere to the word limit set by DOS2, and ensure they provide sufficient detail on each project, in order for the FCA to be able to evaluate the response accurately. 6. You mention 4 Scrum teams - what's the average size of these teams? Our Scrum teams consist of 1 Scrum master and 4-5 developers. 7. You mention a Cloud Migration Programme that has been set up to lead this activity - can we get more details on the programme? Are there any urgent deadlines/milestones? The Programme structure has a number of workstreams, one of which is an Industrialisation workstream. This workstream has an objective to further build out the enterprise-class cloud services. The requirement from this proposal is for an Agile Scrum team to deliver services within this industrialisation workstream. Categories include;• Service Enablement• Finance operations• Change and configuration• Identity and secrets• Network services 8. Is it under IR35 or outside? This is an engagement for a team delivering an outcomes-based project. Our view is that this engagement is outside of IR35. 9. You mention having to provide sufficient project details for skills requested. However, each question has about 3-4 skills and it may be the case that we will have to use different examples to provide evidence. Is the expectation that we elaborate on the skill where it's mentioned 'essential' in brackets as there is a word limit of 100 for each response? It is expected that you elaborate on all skills or tools marked as "essential" within the essential questions.If the question indicates one tool or skill as essential (e.g. Chef), bidders should prioritise providing strong examples of experience with this tool, and refer to the remaining tools in the question if the word limit permits. Where the question specifies several essential tools or skills, bidders who can refer to all of these, or provide an example where all of the tools were utilised on a project, will receive higher scores. 10. What level of input will the DevOps team have to influence architecture or design of the cloud platform and migration strategy? Or is this purely an implementation team working to a fixed delivery approach? The design has already been done by the Solution Architects and the CTO, so this is a purely implementation team.