the Initial Technical Proposal REMAINS as Wednesday, April 15, 2015 on or before 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Transcription

1 DATE: TO: FROM: RE: All Prospective Proposers Valerie Rolandelli Associate Vice President RFP IT Quality Assurance Testing Services Addendum #3 dated 04/09/2015 The following amends the above referenced RFP documents. Receipt of this addendum is to be acknowledged by completing the enclosed "Acknowledgement of Receipt of Addenda Form and including it in the Technical Proposal. 1. The due date and time for the Initial Technical Proposal REMAINS as Wednesday, April 15, 2015 on or before 5:00 p.m. EDT. Proposals must be delivered to the Issuing Office (see Section I, Paragraph 2) in accordance with Section I, Paragraph 6 of the solicitation document. Late proposals cannot be accepted. 2. Attached please find the Solicitation Questions/Issues Log that responds to Questions 28 through 32. These questions were unanswered in the previous addendum. Attachments: Question/Issues Log for RFP End of Addendum 3 dated RFP Addendum #3 dated Page 1 of 2

2 RFP NO.: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RECEIPT OF ADDENDA FORM TECHNICAL PROPOSAL DUE DATE: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 on or before 5:00 pm EDT RFP FOR: IT Quality Assurance Testing Services NAME OF PROPOSER: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RECEIPT OF ADDENDA The undersigned, hereby acknowledges the receipt of the following addenda: Addendum No. 1 dated Addendum No. 2 dated Addendum No. 3 dated Addendum No. Addendum No. dated dated As stated in the RFP documents, this form is included in our Technical Proposal. Signature Name Printed END OF FORM Title Date RFP Addendum #3 dated Page 2 of 2

3 Addendum No. Solicitation Section Solicitation Reference Question UMUC Response Questions Addendum No n/a n/a Who is the incumbent? AEGIS.net is currently providing these services. 2 1 n/a n/a Are there any specific contract vehicles e.g MBE, CATS etc. preferred by you for this contract? No. This is a stand alone Request for Proposal. The resulting contract is in Appendix C. 3 1 Section III, Article 1 Initial Phase of the Procurement, Technical Proposal Section 1. Technical Proposal Is there a page limit for the proposals? And if so what parts of the proposal are included in the page limit? There is no page limit, but Proposers are requested to be clear, concise, and succinct. The proposal response is to be tailored directly for UMUC and not be primarily boilerplate or template language. Refer to Page 29, Section 4.3 Technical Evaluation for further information. Page 1 of 12

4 Section II Scope of Work/Requirements Solicitation Schedule Page 3 and Sample Transmittal Letter Where will the work take place? I assume Adelphi, MD but I don't see that explicitly stated in the RFP. Refer to Section II Scope /Requirements, Paragraph 6 on page 20 of the Solicitation. The onsite staff will work from UMUC s Headquarters in Adelphi, MD, however, UMUC also has facilities in Largo, MD, so the Contractor s staff may be required to travel to Largo. However, per the RFP, and specifically this Paragraph 6, UMUC is open to remote work for certain types of employees (not the QA Manager or Core Team). As a result of a recent scheduling issue, the dates for the Oral Presentations/Discussion Sessions are REVISED to Friday, May 1, 2015 and/or Monday, May 4, A revised sample Transmittal Letter is issued with Addendum 1. Page 2 of 12

5 Questions - Addendum 2 April 7, Paragraph 1. Scope of Work Can you provide UMUC s portfolio for us to review in order to establish the size and complexity of UMUC s applications? Is there an established budget for this project? If so what is it? PeopleSoft, SalesForce, D2L are currently part of routine work. UMUC is currently replacing PeopleSoft HR with Workday HR. There are 7 projects are development changes to UMUC The contract is funded. Anticipated spend is approximately $800K/year however, there is no guarantee of a dollar amount or number of projects. This is only an estimate. 8 2 Section II - Scope What standards/frameworks do UMUC currently use for their systems development and IT Quality Assurance work? ITILv3, Agile, Waterfall. Page 3 of 12

6 Current Environment 2. Current Environment Does UMUC currently have an IT Quality Assurance team in place? If yes, what is the size of the team (number of personnel)? Could you please provide number of current core test team and remote team/staff. The solicitation does not clearly mention the actual volume of the work to assess the scale of the services. Please clarify what is UMUC s expected volume of work. Yes. 7 FT, 1 PT. 3 FT Core Staff members for routine work and 5 for project work. The project work will vary so this number will go up and down depending on demand. We currently have SalesForce, PeopleSoft, and D2L as large major applications that require support. The Gap Analysis that we are expecting the vendor to perform will measure where each application is at in terms of test scripts written, automation, test suites, etc. Project work will vary QA Staff, Scalability, and Hours of Operation How big of team is the Contractor expected to have in QA department provided by the vendor. That is up to the vendor. The current vendor has 3FT core team members and 1 QA Manager on site. Page 4 of 12

7 QA Staff, Scalability and Hours of Operations What part of work is allowed /expected to perform on campus and offsite? The QA Manager and Core Team are expected to be onsite for routine work. If a project requires the team to be onsite then onsite is what will be required QA Staff, Scalability and Hours of Operations Does offsite location refers to any location in US and/or abroad? We prefer US. The offsite staff is expected to work EST Section II, Scope of Work Paragraph 4.4 Test Tools Section II, bullet number 4 Other Roles and Responsibilities and Expectations, 4.4 Test Tools states: The vendor will recommend, own, and host all tools sets needed to accomplish the work including but not limited to test dashboard, test automation tools, performance testing tools, security/penetration testing tools. All scripts developed within these tools are solely owned by UMUC. The statement is clear enough in terms of the contractor being responsible for owning and hosting the tools to perform and deliver the requirements of the RFP. However, does this mean that UMUC does not have any such tools that are used enterprise-wide? Will UMUC have the final decision on what a contractor Currently UMUC doesn t have any internal QA specific tools such as JMeter, Test Studio, etc. UMUC does use ServiceNow for managing tickets and service request. UMUC would like to partner with the vendor on the decision for the tools. Regarding the questions about licenses, we do not have any full time QA personnel but will require people to have access to dashboards or defect Page 5 of 12

8 recommends? Will UMUC need any seat licenses to be provided by the vendor? If so, how many? reporting. This can be determined during the Gap Analysis Will it be possible to please list out all tools and custom development work that has been utilized at UMUC? UMUC does not understand the question but here are the technologies used to develop in house: Technologies used include PeopleCode, Eclipse, Maven, Java8, ColdFusion and Java Utilities. Most of the custom development work is Web Services Current Environment As mentioned in Solicitation there are custom developed applications, please provide information on if they are developed in-house and if yes, then how many Developers are involved in it and what are the technologies used Yes they are developed in house. Technologies used include PeopleCode, Eclipse, Maven, Java8, ColdFusion and Java Utilities. We have 8 FT developers. Page 6 of 12

9 17 2 n/a n/a 18 2 Page 11, Paragraph 3. Deliverables, Transition Plan for Current Work Does the incumbent qualify for rebidding, and will they have preference over other bidder being a incumbent there? If transition takes more than 4 weeks, will the current incumbent provide their support for extended transitioning activities This is an open procurement; all interested vendors are welcome to submit a proposal, including the incumbent. All Proposers are treated equally in the evaluation process. UMUC will be responsible for managing the incumbent during a transition process. As part of the Proposer s response to Solicitation Section III, Article 1, Paragraph 2.4 Quality Assurance Methodologies and Processes, Proposers are to provide their anticipated schedule for a transition. This schedule should show the participation of the Proposer, UMUC s staff, as well as the current Contractor. Page 7 of 12

10 19 2 Does proposed vendor need to conduct non-functional testing also like, performance, load, stress, security, vulnerability testing etc. What specific types of testing are expected from the selected vendor (i.e. functional, performance, security, penetration, etc.) Yes. This is stated in the RFP. All types of testing are expected based on release notes, upgrade requirements and project requirements. We are a full service online university so the tests mentioned in this qquestion #19 are all services that the vendor should be able to provide What are the QA Tools that are being used currently. Test Studio, JMeter, VersionOne for defect reporting and defect tracking. Version One is being replaced by ServiceNow Page 20, Paragaph 5.3 Scalable. We understand UMUC requires flexibility in terms of adding remote staff, we wanted to know what would be the minimum duration for a consultants to be on the project. It depends on the project and the requirements for the project. Page 8 of 12

11 22 2 n/a n/a Is the current incumbent in a multiyear contract and if so, are they in the final year? If not, is UMUC no longer satisfied with the work being performed? - The current contract expires August 31, It is not appropriate for UMUC to comment on vendor performance Page 16, Paragraph through How many test cases or test steps are in a script based on the project sizes you have listed in the table on page 16? This is described under Project Work in the RFP. Refer to pages 16 through Current Environment How large is the testing effort (FTEs) currently being supported by the incumbent? Total staff for both Routine and Project work currently includes: 7 FT, 1 PT. 3 FT resource comprise the core team that manages Routine Work. The other 5 team members are supporting project requests which can vary. Page 9 of 12

12 25 2 Is there a preference to stay with the current automation toolsets being used by the incumbent to leverage existing scripts? Refer to Question 20 above regarding current test tools being utilized. There is no preference but where possible we d like to reuse what has been built to date What automation toolsets are currently being used by the incumbent? Test Studio Paragraph 4.3 Environment Ownership When referencing the QA Environments does this also refer to creating and managing the system to be tested? For instance, if the system to be tested is a PeopleSoft system, is the expectation that the selected vendor set up the PeopleSoft system? Yes, with deployment instructions provided by the vendor or internal teams and 3 General General Are there any restrictions on the utilization of non- US Citizens, security clearance requirements of personnel? Addendum 3 response: No. We prefer the staff work in the US and they will be required to work EST. Page 10 of 12

13 29 2 and 3 Page 10, 2. Current Environment Number of applications/systems within your portfolio that are going to be tested within the next months. Core (committed demand); Project based (variable demand) Addendum 3 response: For routine projects we will follow the prescribed maintenance schedules from PeopleSoft. SalesForce and D2L. PeopleSoft and D2L have monthly maintenance schedules as well as upgrades -- which varies from year to year. The average is one per year for PSFT and D2L. For SaleForce, the development requests are migrated using an agile approach and done on a bimonthly basis as well as quarterly maintenance window. For projects, this is based upon request and at this time can't provide an accurate estimate. We currently have 4 strategic projects that QA is working on. Since this number varies, the QA vendor is encouraged to scope this appropriately and onboard resources as needed. Page 11 of 12

14 30 2 and 3 Page 10, 2. Current Environment Of the number of projects, what percentage are large/strategic projects vs. business-asusual/maintenance/keep-the-lights-on type of projects? Average per application (or per release) per year. Addendum 3 response: See answer to #29 above and 3 Page 10, 2. Current Environment Can you provide the different type of technologies that will apply to testing the applications, systems under test (mainframe, java, COTS, etc.) Addendum 3 response: COTS, Eclipse, Maven, Web Services, Java 8, Cold Fusion (minimal), Java Utilities 32 2 and 3 Page 10, 2. Current Environment What percentage of the application portfolio for testing will have integration/interface testing associated with it? Addendum 3 response: All major applications have integration and integration components. Addendum 3 Responses provided to Questions 28 through 32 Page 12 of 12