Workload Measurement Tool - discovery and alpha

Tender description

About adding context and requirements test Pre-market engagement N/A Work done so far In June 2023 a review of the business requirements for a workload measurement tool kicked off, led by the Workforce Impact and Planning System (WIPS) team. This review will be completed in September and will provide the discovery team a clear view of the business needs in this space. The Workforce Planning System (WPS), a project responsible for WMT as part of wider workforce planning improvements, is currently undertaking a review of all activities performed by Probation staff and their timing with the aim of improving the underlying data to measure workload. WPS is also working closely with the People Group in HMPPS, where a procurement of a tool to improve HR data is currently underway Which phase the project is in Discovery Existing team There will be a need to work closely with the existing Manage a Workforce team, who is currently maintaining the WMT tool. The Manage a Workforce team will pick-up outcomes from discovery and alpha and move this development into Private Beta. Therefore, the work will need to be handed over to that team. There is also the need to keep WIPS informed and consulted while the discovery and alpha work progresses Address where the work will be done Sheffield Digital Studio, Greenfield House, 32 Scotland Street, Sheffield, S3 7DQ Working remotely although regular (likely to be twice a month) travel may be required to either - 102 Petty France, London SW1H 9AJ - Sheffield Digital Studio, Greenfield House, 32 Scotland Street, Sheffield, S3 7DQ Working arrangements The majority of work can be completed remotely i.e. homeworking. However, there may be a requirement to work with MoJ Digital or business stakeholders who are predominantly based in London and Sheffield or to visit users at HMPPS locations. Security clearance – SC clearance is required. Provide more information about your security requirements: Security Check (SC) Latest start date 2023-10-15 Enter the expected contract length: 5 months Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes Indicative maximum: 567000 Provide further information: Indicative budget is inclusive of VAT Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply Summary of work Run a discovery to identify opportunities to improve current staff workload management capabilities in Probation; Identify user needs; Analyse current system landscape; Prototype and test solutions and provide recommendations on the best way to fulfil business and user needs to gather and track the workload of our workforce in Probation. Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Why the work is being done There is a business need to have accurate and up to date data on workload capacity of probation staff working in sentence management and other probation delivery areas. There is a need to empower Probation Practitioners to visualise, analyse and manage their workload. This includes, but not limited to, a workload breakdown by the number of cases that fall under a sentence type (e.g. Custody, Community, Licence). To address the above, a digital product - the Workload Measurement Tool (WMT) - was developed by third party suppliers, and re-platformed in house by Probation Digital in January 2022. However, it was a lift and shift exercise and no user research took place. Therefore, it is unclear what the user needs are and whether these are met by the current version of the tool. The current tool pulls data from nDelius, probation case management system, and activity and timing assumptions, and it presents a workload caseload capacity for each member of staff, that can be viewed at an aggregate level for different business units. However, the data provided is not real time data, and it only covers one of the Probation delivery areas, Sentence Management. The business problem you need to solve This procurement would allow Probation Digital to consider opportunities for reducing the limitations of the current WMT to provide improved business intelligence on resource capacity and resource allocation, provide accurate and reliable data to our staff for making allocation decisions, manage resource allocation, and produce sound and robust workforce plans to manage future demand. This procurement aligns with HMPPS objectives of enabling people to work at their best and of transforming through partnership and modernising our estates and technology. The desired outcome is to have a scalable and simple to use tool to provide a picture of capacity across the Probation Service and inform workload and demand management decision making by allowing comparison of workload across individuals, teams or Probation Delivery Units. In addition, the tool will support managers to understand workload demands of practitioners to support identification of priorities and demand management. Moreover, functioning within the Probation Workforce Programme, a Workload Management Tool (WMT) will provide the probation service with accurate, reliable and up to date information and data to support the business leaders and management to make effective, informed and justified workforce and workload decisions. First user type: Probation Practitioners First user type: Senior Probation Officers First user type: Senior Management Team in Probation First user type: Data Administrators First user type: Performance and Quality Managers First user type: Heads of Performance and Quality Enter more details about this user type: One of the aims of the discovery work is to identify user needs Enter more details about this user type: One of the aims of the discovery work is to identify user needs Enter more details about this user type: One of the aims of the discovery work is to identify user needs Enter more details about this user type: One of the aims of the discovery work is to identify user needs Enter more details about this user type: One of the aims of the discovery work is to identify user needs Enter more details about this user type: One of the aims of the discovery work is to identify user needs Questions and Clarifications 1. On technical scoring, the percentage for essentials skills and experience/nice to have skills and experience is set at 79%. Can you confirm if this is correct? Yes Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:42 2. Can we have confirmation that suppliers will only have to answer the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience for stage 1? Yes Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:36 3. Q1. Can HMPPS advise what technologies the WMT has been developed/built with? Q2. In terms or reference to the lift and shift migration of WMT, can HMPPS confirm what platform/technology it current operates on? Q3. Is there an incumbent supplier currently supporting and maintaining WMT? If so, who is it? Q4. If this supplier is active, are they eligible to bid on this discovery and alpha work? Q5. Does HMPPS expect any further Alpha work or scope to be required, if the initial discovery work output indicates that? A1. Kotlin, Node JS, Java. A2. It is currently hosted in our infrastructure and we expect the same for the new tool. A3. No. It is currently supported by an in-house team. A4. N/A A5. We are currently planning for one alpha. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:35 4. Within the shortlisting questions, you reference delivering research at pace. What is your expectation for timelines on conducting research, including recruitment, etc? We expect discovery to be completed in roughly 8 weeks. Recruitment of staff will be the responsibility of the supplier but will be facilitated by our stakeholders. Research will only involve internal users, so we don’t expect recruitment to take longer. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:31 5. Q1. Is there an external supplier currently supporting with the work outlined in the procurement docs? E.g. the business requirements for a workload management tool Q2. Does the authority expect that it will continue with its current workforce measurement tool or that a new tool will be built following on from this Discovery and Alpha? A1. No A2. A new tool will be built following this discovery and alpha by an in-house team. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:30 6. Please can you confirm what answer is required for nice to have question 4? Will a confirmation that we do hold Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation and our certificate number be sufficient to score full marks? Yes Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:30 7. your message of '04/08/2023 13:47' states under point 3) "Technical and data architects and developers needs to have SC in place." Can you please confirm that you would therefore not be willing to accept bids from suppliers who require SC sponsorship for their technical / engineering staff? We will not accept bids from suppliers who require SC sponsorship for their technical / engineering staff Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:28 8. Are we able to use offshore resources to work on the Discovery? No, it is not acceptable to offshore resources Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:27 9. 1.Can you provide an overview of the further assessment documents that will be issued to shortlisted suppliers, We are keen to understand the volume and type of information so we can ensure that we have the right skills and people lined up to review, assimilate and respond to the further assessment if shortlisted. 2.Can you provide guidance on the structure of the pricing evaluation. As most questions discuss indicative teams and resources we are keen to understand how pricing will be evaluated given we will be asked to provide an example team structure. A1. We will provide a brief with further information on the product, user needs and problem statement. For further assessment, we will follow the criteria below: 1. [case study] A recent and relevant case study of a similar project that explains your approach and methodology and how it ensured successful delivery. 1. Explain your approach and methodology for successfully running discoveries and move to prototyping and testing with real users. 2. Provide an example team structure including skills, experience, responsibilities, and relevance of individuals, and explain how you will ensure the team successfully delivers the required outcomes. 3. Explain your exit strategy to successfully handover to an internal team at the end of the contract. 4. Provide a project plan for what your team would deliver during the timescales A2. Assessments will be made based on the proposed team put forward and the associated costs. Where it is felt that a supplier is deliberately proposing a team that is inadequately low on resource numbers just simply to increase their chance of securing maximum scores the Buyer will seek clarification on the proposal and where necessary apply a score reflective on the agreed proposed structure. Bidders will be expected to honour the proposed structure for the duration of the call-off contract Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:26 10. For the areas in Q6 Demonstrable Capabilities, can the experiences be split into different questions? It is not possible to split out the question Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:23 11. Is the current Workload Measurement Tool bespoke or does it utilise COTS software? Does the Workload Measurement Tool have any integration or interfacing with any other corporate system? What other software products are used within the Workforce Planning System project? A1. The current tool is bespoke and was developed in house. However, limited user research was done, so it is not designed around its users. A2. Yes, it integrates with our Allocation tool, used to allocate cases to people in probation. It also integrates with our case management system. A3. Orgvue, SOP, Excel for modelling and extract data from our case management system, Amazon S3 for storing reports originated from our case management systems. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:21 12. Could you please advise if we could have the CQs that have been asked by other suppliers? We can only see the answers but not the associated questions. Participants should now be seeing the Questions raised along with the official response provided. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:19 13. Q1. How will the contracting authority evaluate a supplier’s delivery track record. Are you looking for a single example or the breadth of experience. Will examples working directly with the Contracting Authority score higher than those for other clients (private or public sector)? Q2. Can you provide details of the event driven architectures/patterns used with MoJ? Q3. Can you provide some quantification of the term ‘complex’? Q4. Can you provide a list of the types of tool dependencies that you are looking for As-Is and To-Be mapping for? Q5. Can you provide more information on the question “Microservices ecosystem experience”. Can you provide some context around your microservice ecosystem so we can respond to them? A1. Track record will be assessed based on the relevance to the MoJ requirements and utilising examples from working with the MoJ will not receive preferential treatment A2. We use event driven events to share data across independent systems. A3. We define the system landscape complex as we are currently managing workforce data using multiple offline and online systems. This includes HR systems, case management tool, offline reports, forecasting and modelling tools in excel. A4. This includes HR systems, case management tools, offline reports, forecasting and modelling tools in excel. A5. Probation Digital is adopting a microservice architecture to move away from a monolithic case management solution. Unlike in the traditional approach where multiple teams are involved in building a single monolithic application, the microservice model allows one team to take full responsibility to build and manage this small unit of software. We ask the supplier to provide a team that will focus on Workload Measurement capability only, but that has skills and experience in working in an environment where integration with other pieces of software is needed to achieve the ultimate organisational goal. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:17 14. Please can you confirm if the 750 character limit includes or excludes spaces? Character limits are set by Crown Commercial Services and it is believed that this limit is inclusive of spaces Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:15 15. Can the authority, please elaborate and provide further guidance on the below; Essential: Qu: 4: Microservices ecosystem experience Probation Digital is adopting a microservice architecture to move away from a monolithic case management solution. Unlike in the traditional approach where multiple teams are involved in building a single monolithic application, the microservice model allows one team to take full responsibility to build and manage this small unit of software. We ask the supplier to provide a team that will focus on Workload Measurement capability only, but that has skills and experience in working in an environment where integration with other pieces of software is needed to achieve the ultimate organisational goal. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:14 16. Within Attachment 1, the Overview table on page 2 cites the latest start date as 15-10-2023. The Activity Timeline table on page 9 suggests a contract signature of 31-10-2023, and contract start on 1st November 2023. Please can you confirm your preferred latest start date for the work? The timetable within the Public Procurement Gateway is an indicative timetable that we hope will be delivered earlier than planned. Our preferred latest start date is 15th October 2023 Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:13 17. 1) Your proposed start date for the work is 1 November, with both Discovery & Alpha delivered in 5 months. Can you share any indicative thinking about proposed duration of the Discovery and Alpha phases within the 5 months? 2) It is clear that the successful supplier will need to work closely with the WIPS team and the Manage a Workforce Team but we were less clear on the size and skill sets in these teams in order to be able to put forward a team that complements them. Can you share information either on a) the skill sets/team size you hope a supplier would bring, or b) further details on the skillsets/team size of the MoJ team members so that we can plan around that? 3) Is sponsorship for SC clearance available for any proposed team members? 1. The business has done previous discovery work in this space. Therefore, we think it won’t be required to spend more than 8-10 weeks into discovery and to use the remaining time for testing hypotheses. 2. The WIPS team is a policy team, they have limited knowledge of digital systems and limited technical and architectural skills. The Manage a Workforce Team is a product delivery team under Probation Digital. It is made of a Product Manager, Delivery Manager, 3 developers, 1 Business Analyst, 1 User Researcher, 1 Content Designer, 1 Interaction Designer and 1 Technical Architect. We require the supplier to bring in a team (6-10 people max) with extensive experience in user research and user centred design, system integration, technical and data architecture, business analysis and software development. An example of a team for this work could be: 1x Technical/Data Architect 1x Interaction Designer 1x Service Designer 1x User Researcher 1x Product Owner 1x Business Analyst 1x Full stack developer 3. Technical and data architects and developers needs to have SC in place. For other roles we could put forward the SC process for the supplier. Staff needs to be eligible for SC clearance. Having the entire team with SC clearance is preferred but not essential. Last Updated: 14 August 2023, 15:12