004 FY24_PWS_WebApps_Operations_Maintenance v1_02222024.docx

Performance Work Statement For Internal Revenue Service Operation and Maintenance Support Services PWS Version Number: 1 - Date: 02/22/2024

1.0 Introduction

This Contract Agreement / Task Order is for the “AGILE Technology/Web Application Support Services” requirement.

2.0 Background

2.1 Web Applications (Web Apps) Program

With over 240 million tax filings in the United States every year, the IRS is emphasizing the use of technology to be smarter, faster, and completely accessible to its customers. The goal is to provide taxpayers access to their tax account information twenty-four hours per day both online and through mobile devices. The Web Apps Program provides modern, online and mobile products with increasingly robust capabilities such as tax account status, payment functionality, and on-demand self-service. Key drivers for the Web Apps Program include:

· Increasing satisfaction among all individual taxpayer groups by ensuring taxpayer self-service needs are met efficiently and effectively online

· Reducing call volumes and manpower support required by providing an improved online user experience

· Consolidating IRS service options to a centrally accessible location online by positioning self-service as the primary channel for all taxpayer interactions with the IRS

· Automating the authorized disclosure of tax information to third parties

· Authentication of users of electronic services accounts

2.2 Online Account

The Web Applications Program is providing improvements to taxpayer service by delivering a unified Online Account product accessible through a single online account, to provide taxpayers accurate clear bills and computations of balances due; transparent explanations and next steps to resolve tax-related issues; secure self-service or full-service payment options; timely confirmations and expected follow-ups; and account status and resolution, that is available anywhere via online, mobile, or telephony access. Online Account is the first product approved for development by Web Apps. Additional products/capabilities that have been added are ID Verify, Estimated Income Payment (EIP), Digital Notices and Letters (DN&L), Power of Attorney using a TaxPro account, Disclosure of Authorization for TaxPro accounts, Integrated Payment API with Fiscal Services Interface Gateway & Bureau of Fiscal Service, Installment Agreement, and Modernize Online Installment Agreements (IA). Other products are Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Business Online Accounts (BOLA), Individual Online Account (IOLA), Clean Energy, Online Tools and Integrated Services (OTIS).

2.3 Web Applications Organization

The Web Apps Application Development (AD) operates as a “prime integrator” across Web Apps Business and IT Delivery Partners in the organization across the Enterprise to deliver web-based applications as outline in the following figure.

The Web Apps AD performs the following services:

· Manages the execution of the program and is accountable for overall Program success

· Acts as the front door between IT and the Business

· Manages and executes the Product Roadmap & Release Plan

· Communicates and integrates across the Enterprise

· Executes the governance framework

· Manages scope, schedule, and cost associated with application delivery

· Coordinates resource and risk management

2.4 Web Apps Program Cadence

The Web Apps PMO has drawn upon best industry practices in agile development to pilot the Web Apps delivery process. The following diagram illustrates the high-level Web Apps operating model, which enables IRS IT to effectively coordinate work and produce high quality software on a consistent 9-week cadence. The operating model, which consists of a Governance and Investment cadence and a Development/Delivery cadence, utilizes industry best practices, and is tailored to meet the IRS governance and compliance needs.

2.5 Web Apps Operating Model

The Web Apps Program Operating Model is comprised of four layers: The Executive Boards, Program, Teams, and Delivery Partners.

2.5.1 Executive Boards

The Application Development Customer Service Domain (AD CSD GB) governs all Web Apps Operations and Maintenance investments and any associated investments or components as deemed appropriate by the AD CSD GB. The primary objectives of the GB are to ensure information technology investments, Web Apps O&M objectives, and Web Apps Product objectives are met. Additional responsibilities of the Web Apps Governance Board include reviewing and approving budget increases, approving milestone exits, recommending the approval O&M work, and oversight Web Apps O&M.

The Web Apps Executive Oversight Team (EOT) is represented by leadership from the Web Apps Program and Business and Delivery partners. The team meets once monthly to review the key accomplishments of Web Apps development and deployment. The team reviews progress made by the Program, highlighting delivery status, risks, partner updates, and spotlights on areas of interest.

The Web Apps Governance Board (GB) was chartered by the Strategic Development Executive Steering Committee (SD ESC) and governs all Web Apps investments and any associated investments or components as deemed appropriate by the SD ESC. The primary objectives of the GB are to ensure information technology investments, Web Apps Program objectives, and Web Apps Product objectives are met. Additional responsibilities of the Web Apps Governance Board include reviewing and approving budget increases, approving milestone exits, recommending the approval of new products, and oversight of the performance of the Web Apps portfolio.

The Strategic Development Executive Steering Committee (SD ESC) is the foremost governing organization for the Web Apps program. The SD ESC governs the design, development, and deployment of Web Apps projects and investments. Web Apps briefs the SD ESC on the status of approved work. The SD ESC determines which prioritized potential investments will be chosen for development and identifies potential products to be transitioned out of the development process.

2.5.2 Program

The Application Development Leadership team is organized around four main areas:

1. Strategy and Planning: Strategy and Planning involves identification of future staffing needs, program cost forecasting, budget formulation and execution, product planning and prioritization, contract and task order management, and contract performance management. The Strategy and Planning team also provides information to support Governance level decisions and processes, coordinates of governance activities, and manages risks and issues that impact the Web Apps O&M program.

2. Integration Support: Integration Support consist of program reporting and oversight, identification and tracking of organizational readiness activities, managing new environment and tool requests to support the Web Apps O&M program, and managing and maintaining the Web Apps program SharePoint document repository.

3. Delivery Management: The Delivery Management consists of managing the end-to-end delivery process for the Web Apps O&M program. The primary functions are Product Management, Release Management, and Technical Integration. The team coordinates with OLS and delivery partners to identify all potential business and technical elements, and align resources needed for development and deployment. The team manages and facilitates all Program Increment pre-planning, planning and execution activities, and manages iteration planning and execution, and all release activities. The team works with partner organizations to ensure environment readiness for deployment and to work toward resolution of issues that impact testing and deployment.

Production Integration: The team will be responsible for managing operation services, application monitoring and security remediation as well as leading production readiness for O&M Web Apps products.

2.5.3 Teams

Web Apps Managed Applications Teams consist of Product Teams and Federated Delivery Teams (FDTs). Product teams include a Product Manager, Product Owner, and a UX team. Product Management is responsible for establishing a prioritized roadmap/backlog for program increments, decomposing epics into user stories, prioritizing user stories, and accepting user stories that have been completed. The UX team designs the user interface according to section 508 requirements. Web Apps FDTs are cross-functional teams comprised of developers, testers, business SMEs, a Product Owner, delivery Project Manager, and a Scrum Master. Supporting roles include a technical lead, chief architect, security/cybersecurity, configuration manager, and system engineers. Federated Delivery Teams leverage the development cadence to design, develop, test, and deploy Web Apps products and related products. Web Apps uses the FDT model across Web Apps Managed Applications.

The team develops and maintains platform services that enable the monitoring of usage of the application and E2E diagnostics. For security, the team maintains services for SAAS audit data, enterprise authentication and authorization controls, and enables operational security through continuous monitoring. Team members frequently collaborate and align with application product team members that integrate their functionality with the platform.

The Web Apps Supported Applications External Team produces and supports external products that leverage the Web Apps platform. External Teams may or may not follow the same development/delivery cadence as Web Apps Managed Application Teams; however, they participate in Web Apps Integrated Program Review meetings and attend Web Apps PI Planning events.

The Web Apps program partners with various Delivery Partners across the IRS to facilitate and support development and deployment of Web Apps products. These supplier organizations include: Enterprise Operations, Enterprise Services, eA3 (Authentication, Authorization, Access), Privacy, Strategy and Planning, Information Resources Accessibility Program, User and Network Services, Applications Development, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise Services Testing. Several suppliers (Cybersecurity, IRAP, and ES) provide representatives who are members the FDTs, as their activities are embedded in the entire development/ delivery process.

2.6 Federated Delivery Teams (FDT)

Web Apps leverages Federated Delivery Teams (FDT) as part of the operating model to develop and deliver the Web Apps products. One or more FDT(s) led by a Release Manager will work in concert during every Program Increment. Each FDT consists of the following team members, though the number of team members may vary per FDT:

· Release Manager

· Scrum Master (Applications Development)

· Product Owner (Wage & Investment, or other Business Owner)

· Product Manager (Online Services)

· Developers (O&M and New Feature Applications Development) Cyber Engineers (Cybersecurity)

· System Engineer (Enterprise Services)

· Testers (Enterprise Systems Testing)

· 508 Specialists (Information Resource Accessibility Program)

· Production Support Analyst (Applications Development)

· DevOps Build Manager (Applications Development)

2.7 IRS Agile Enterprise Lifecycle (ELC) Path

Web Apps O&M development follows the IRS Agile Planned Maintenance ELC path as outlined in the figure below.

3.0 Objectives

The IRS is seeking to deliver information technology solutions and digital capabilities with improved reliability, using a common services approach to application development. The focus of the IRS model will be an agile approach utilizing Test Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Integration (CI) methodologies to deliver applications that are fully tested with release-ready products scheduled for implementation.

The IRS has chosen a strategy for application development that will maintain an IRS staff presence but outsources most of the work, which alleviates resource shortages in the IRS IT organization while maintaining IRS oversight and direction for product development.

Applications will be designed to be user friendly for taxpayer self-assistance across a broad audience and seamlessly integrated with the rest of the IRS offerings. Work products will be designed pursuant to an agile or iterative development process as a preferred methodology. As IRS applications are subject to accessibility and early security reviews, close coordination with review protocols and stakeholders are necessary to achieve short development cycle(s) and application deployment(s). The Agile teams will have access to the Dev and Test environments while higher environments are restricted to Enterprise Operations (EOPSs) personnel.

4.0 Skill Requirements

The contractor shall provide technical methods, techniques, and concepts that are innovative, practical, cost-effective, and conducive to Agile/iterative application development, 508 Compliance and security testing. The contractor shall develop applications based on user stories that are evolving and emerge as the business climate shifts. It is expected that all code developed by the teams will be for new functionality or critical changes to existing functionality as identified and prioritized by the government product owners.

These acceptance criteria will specify expected functionality for a user story, as well as any non- functional requirements that must be met in story development. The IRS Product Owners supported by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and Business Analysts will determine whether acceptance criteria have been satisfied.

A User Story will only be considered done when all the following conditions have been met:

· Code Completed and meets defined acceptance criteria

· Unit Test Passed

· Code Reviewed by EA and/or other applicable party

· Necessary logging has been incorporated (when applicable)

· Penetration Test Assessment/Vulnerability/Weakness/Defect Reports provided to Cybersecurity group

· Functional Testing Passed

· 508 Testing Passed (if applicable)

· Integration Testing Passed (if applicable)

· Performance Testing Passed (if applicable)

· Product Owner signs off on functionality delivered The contractor should provide personnel who are operationally adept to the following tools, operating systems, coding languages and concepts:

Java Development: JDK1.8 and 11, MDC, HTTP Filters, Loggers, Concurrency, Security, JPA, JUnit, Selenium, AppScan, REST Service, JBoss EAP, RESTful, OpenShift, Kubernetes, AWS, ISTIO, Spring Projects: MVC, Boot, WebFlux, Cloud, Test, Security, Cache, JPA

Client Development: React, Node.js, NPM, JavaScript, Create React App, Jest, Testing Library, Selenium

Persistence: Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL, MongoDB

Client Development: React, JavaScript, CSS3, HTML5, Node.js, NPM, Babel, Webpack, Jest, Testing Library, Selenium, WCAG 2.0 (Section 508/WCAG 2.0 AA) and WAI-ARIA, Multi-Lingual: Accessibility Standards (a11y), Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n)

DevOps: GitHub, GitLab, Maven, Jenkins build pipelines (including groovy pipeline scripting), SonarQube, Nexus, Babel, Webpack, Node.js, NPM, Git, Kubernetes, Kustomize, OpenShift, ISTIO, Kubernetes, AWS, Bash scripting, GitFlow

508 Testing: JAWS, Dragon, Zoom Text

Other Skills: Splunk, IBM CLM, Excel, PowerPoint, AppDynamics

Other Concepts: Agile methodology

The contractor shall provide:

· CLM Subject Matter Experts (SME) with knowledge of Agile, development methodologies, and proven delivery track records developing filters and reports out of CLM for statuses, system and product performance, briefings, and tracking.

· Extensive knowledge and expertise in the following tools necessary to support this task effort: Rational Collaboration Lifecycle Management (CLM), Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

5.0 Contractor Key Personnel

Program Manager and other key personnel shall be designated during individual Task Order quotation. Key personnel (KP) are defined as personnel: (i) identified in the quote as key individual(s) to be assigned for participation in the performance of the BPA and its associated orders; (ii) whose resumes were submitted with the quote; or (iii) which are designated as key personnel by agreement of the Government and the Contractor during negotiations.

In the Table below, the Contractor shall identify individuals considered as KP in their quoted staffing projection to fulfill Technical / Price Quote.

Key Personnel

The Task Order Program Manager shall be responsible for the performance of work performed under their designated Task Order(s). The Program Manager shall have full authority to act on behalf of the Contractor on all award matters relating to daily operation. The Program Manager shall be available during core hours – 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday thru Friday except Federal holidays or when the IRS facility is closed for administrative reasons.

· The Contractor shall submit resume for identified PM for review and qualifications verification.

· Personnel whose resumes are proposed are subject to the evaluation process for skillset accessibility. Agreement of the selection by the government and the contractor will be determined before award of Task Order(s).

The Contractor must notify the Contracting Officer prior to making any changes or substitutions in key personnel. No substitutions shall be made except in accordance with below process and substitution clause located within IRS Security Clauses specifically BPA Clause #26 IR1052.204.9006 – NOTIFICATION OF CHANGE IN CONTRACTOR EMPLOYEE EMPLOYMENT STATUS, ASSIGNMENT, or STANDING.

1. Contractor promptly notifies the Contracting Officer in writing, at least fifteen (15) working days in advance of the proposed substitutions. The Government has 30 days to approve or disapprove key personnel or they are deemed acceptable substitutions. Contractor must provide:

a. detailed explanation of the circumstances necessitating the proposed substitutions,

b. complete resume for the proposed substitute, and

c. any other information requested by the Contracting Officer needed to approve or disapprove the proposed substitution.

2. All proposed substitutions must have qualifications that are equal to or greater than the labor category position requirements.

3. The Contracting Officer (CO), will forward request to authorized Program Office representative (usually BPA or Task Order Level COR) to conduct evaluation of request. Representative will notify CO approval or disapproval.

6.0 Description of Task Areas

The IRS is seeking support for this task order; the scope is for high performing Operation and Maintenance teams to provide software O&M development support. The contractor shall provide technical method, techniques, and concepts that are innovative, practical, cost effective, and conducive to Agile/iterative application development, testing, and delivery.

The contractor shall support applications based on their original requirements that may require enhancements, updates and fixes as the business climate shifts. It is expected that all code developed by the teams will be for enhancements or critical changes to existing functionality as identified and prioritized by the Government product owners.

6.1 Task Area 1 – Transition Plan and Orientation Briefing (BPA 7.2, 13.0) The Contractor will provide transition plans and an orientation briefing for the government. Contractor will discuss and present plans for transitioning task order activities with the incumbent service provider as necessary and will ensure transition plan is implemented within a time frame agreed upon by the contractor and the government. Contractor will discuss and present plans for transitioning task order activities with the incumbent service provider as necessary. Within one week of task order award, the contractor shall conduct an orientation briefing for the Government. The Government does not desire an elaborate orientation briefing, nor does it expect the contractor to expend significant resources in preparation for this briefing. Rather, the intent of the briefing is to initiate the communication process between the Government and contractor by introducing key task order participants, explaining their roles, reviewing communication ground rules, and assuring a common understanding of task order requirements and objectives.

The orientation briefing shall be held at the Government's facility or virtually and both parties shall mutually agree upon date and time. The completion of this briefing shall result in the following:

· The contractor and Government personnel who will perform work under this task order will be introduced

· The Government will show the applicable facilities to the contractor, if the contractor will be performing work on the Government's site

· Any issues concerning the contractor clearances for contractor personnel will be discussed

· The contractor shall demonstrate confirmation of their understanding of the work to be accomplished under this PWS Desired Outcome – Web Apps and the Contractor have a solid understanding of the task order requirements and that all key personnel are introduced to the IRS team.

Work Products – The contractor shall provide orientation briefing meeting minutes and actions items within one week of the meeting to the PMI Senior Manager.

6.2 Task Area 2 – Director, Customer Service Domain Briefing and Status Reporting (BPA 7.6) The Contractor will schedule and conduct a bi-weekly 45-minute status briefing with the Director, Customer Service Domain on the major activities related to this task order. The meetings shall include Senior Managers. Additionally, the Contractor will provide a monthly status report of all activities related to the tasks outlined in this task order Desired Outcome – The Director, Customer Service Domain is kept informed on the major activities in this Task Order and can provide feedback and direction to the Contractor.

Work Products – Status Briefing meeting materials and meeting minutes.

6.3 Task Area 3 – Operation and Maintenance Production Support (BPA 6.3) The contractor will provide support for multiple key Web Apps initiatives, planning, solutioning, designing and delivering new and feature updates to web applications. Also Web Apps production environment that aligns with the Enterprise Incident Management standards and guidelines.

Contractor team should consist of majority members having IRS and Web Apps institutional and technical knowledge. Contractors shall also be in IRS facility collaboration space and must perform 24x7x365 operation and maintenance production system monitoring, incident management support services and routine system operations.

When incidents accrue triage the incident and restore Web Apps system health by bringing the incident to resolution and must respond to a call within 30 minutes. Support services include support in the following key areas.

6.3.1 Federated Delivery Teams (FDT)

The FDT will be required to produce high quality code based on Web Apps Delivery model per section 2.5 and are responsible for any technical debt that is incurred because of their development activities. Technical debt may be incurred because of design and development decisions made by the team due to competing priorities that may potentially increase the complexity of the code base, necessitating refactoring later. Incurring technical debt may not be avoidable; however, it must be addressed and “paid down” in future development activities. Team members are required to develop user stories to be prioritized in the backlog to address technical debt. Delivery is expected to follow the Web Applications Agile Delivery and O&M process and as applicable, Agile, or iterative development industry best practices, to include version control, automated builds, automated testing, and continuous integration. FDTs shall “handoff” to the deployment team as a package makes its way through the deployment process. FDTs will be responsible for providing continuous production support.

To accomplish this task, the contractor shall be responsible for providing the team members to contribute full suite of development, testing (to include security and 508), integration and delivery tasks using Agile/iterative methodologies, including, but not limited to:

· Participating in capacity planning for new feature development, planning, elaboration, solution design, developing code and other artifacts against the user stories and security requirements documented in the task or as assigned by the government.

· Software code testing, including creating test cases and automated test scripts to support test automation activities; sharing test scripts as needed; working to increase the coverage, quality, and speed of existing tests. Unless stated differently, testing shall be in accordance with the most current version of the Web Applications Testing Support Implementation Plan.

· Performing integration and delivery activities to ensure the automatic build and deployment process works effectively across all environments.

Managing release chute, deployments, production maintenance, production monitoring, incident management, root cause analysis, and development of users stories to resolve issues.

6.3.2 Production Readiness/ Environment Support- Project Manager (Technical Integrator/Environments) Web Apps completes Production environment readiness testing for each product deployment or “drop.” Web Apps plans to deploy product features at least every nine weeks at the end of each Pl, or sooner if/when drops are production ready. The DSRT serves as a component and connectivity validation process in preparation for deployment of a system. The test is divided into a two-part approach that first validates configuration of hardware, software, and connectivity components, and then the connectivity to external servers to confirm complete end-to-end functionality for Web Apps and IRS leadership to assess the state of the production environment for each product release. In addition to the DSRT, Web Apps must validate after key interfacing projects perform maintenance, infrastructure patches occur, or defect fixes are deployed. To accomplish this task area, the contractor shall:

· Apply testing expertise to facilitate the design and development of automated tests to support automated test strategies/ plans for Web Apps DSRT efforts

· Design and develop automated tests efforts to validate taxpayer facing, and back end Web App applications functionality

· Provide input and recommendations to the IRS to update maintain and automate the DSRT playbook execution

· Use automated tool to verify expected environment configurations are present, and document the environment configurations

· Work with Web Apps testing delivery partner to integrate and deploy available tools for automated functional verification of deployed features, capabilities integrated with existing synthetic data testing initiatives

· Update and maintain configuration, and functional automated test scripts

· Measure and report on automated deployment functional, smoke test coverage

· Design and develop manual and automated tests for Web Apps DSRT efforts to support validation of Web Apps application's configuration, availability status

· Provide input and recommendations to automate, DSRT playbook execution and maintain associated test scripts, artifacts

· Support coordination for changes to Web Apps (Dev/Test, Prod) environments including Program Increment deployments (standard and off-cycle), and changes to infrastructure and services driven by the Enterprise and Delivery Partners

· Identify and coordinate operations resources to assist deployment execution based on the developed plans and playbooks

· Validate components of the production ecosystem pre/post deployment activities and Enterprise driven middleware, OS updates, blackouts, security patches, etc.

· Create tasks, tickets for temporary configuration changes to run test cases

· Update and maintain product metric tracking and status reports

· Production defect triage Support - Program Analyst

· Lead and coordinate analysis and investigation into end-2-end monitoring tickets

· Facilitate day of post deployment smoke testing of Web Apps taxpayer facing functionality following Sunday build window deployments

· Lead investigation into failed deployment tests. Monitor and track the resolution of the failed test scenario to closure

· Provide IM support for deployments, support defects isolation and resolution for releases

· Provide daily Issue Resolution and Monitoring status report to IRS, Delivery leadership

· Monitor and track the resolution of production defects to closure

· Document and maintain tracking of end-2-end tickets for reporting and analytics

· coordinate updates or modifications to environment and infrastructure monitoring auto-ticket (IM) requirements

· Ensure continuous monitoring supply alerts to the monitoring dashboard, appropriate auto-ticket issued

· Provide day of coordination and IM support, support defects isolation and resolution for the release (requires after hours on call support)

· Provide day of patching validating support (requires weekend support; requires after hours on call support) Provide day of interfacing project maintenance support (requires weekend support; requires after hours on call support)

6.3.3 Planning, Analysis, Solutioning an Integration

The contractor will provide support for multiple key Web Apps initiatives, planning, solutioning, designing and delivering new and feature updates to web applications.

Contractor team should consist of majority members having IRS and Web Apps institutional and technical knowledge. Contractors should be on IRS facility collaboration space Tuesday to Thursday when possible and/or in alignment with their assigned FDT.

Initial work will consist of engaging enterprise stakeholder organizations to understand the scope, solution, schedule, key milestones and dependencies. The Contractor team will develop story boards, epics, requirements, solution decks, and other work products necessary to capture a complete picture of the initiative. The Contractor identify major tasks based on overall schedule requirements and dependencies, create a delivery schedule. The Web Apps program typically has multiple FDTs working on a variety of initiatives that require both new and modified code/work products. To perform the work, FDT Feature Teams depend on shared services from other teams such as Product Support, Systems Engineering, Cyber, DevOps and EST. The Contractor must coordinate with other teams both internal and external to Web Apps, ensuring that delivery schedules are viable and account for shared resources including people, tools and environments. All dependences shall be identified and track using CLM and/or PI planning documentation.

To accomplish this task area, the contractor shall also:

· Work with project teams to gather business requirements and impacts to Web Apps.

· Work with enterprise partners to identify solution concepts, interfaces, and other dependencies that impact Web Apps.

· Conduct research to support planning and implementation

· Incorporate an understanding of Web Apps program and system boundaries, as well as the boundaries of other IRS systems that interact with Web Apps in solutions, designs, and other work products

· Support the development/modification of ELC and other documentation, such as the VSA, SDSR, ICD, COH, and ROAD Guide, through input and review.

· Maintain central repositories for team artifacts on SharePoint

· Create, review, and vet with stakeholders, storyboards, epics, user stories and requirements.

· Identify, document, and status risks and associated mitigation activities

· Identify and document enabler stories for infrastructure, platform enhancements, and technical debt

· Ensure technical stories do not conflict with technical solutions

· Identify and document technical tasks to support stories

· Assist FDTs with understanding the solution, identifying spikes and enablers, and dependencies

· Ensure the design conforms to technical solution of the platform and program

· Work with Technical Advisors and ES to minimize the impact of technical spikes within the FDTs

6.3.4 Technical Writing

All FDT members are required to have technical writing sufficient to accomplish their Feature teams required documentation.

· Assist with Delivery Support Production environment status reporting

· Document and update playbook/implementation plan to support release

· Attends technical meetings and independently captures updates to project documentation artifacts such as Computer Operator Handbook (COH), Knowledge Articles

· Dedicated to the project during the development, deployment periods

· Assist with DSRT and Delivery validation decks and bottom line upfront (BLUF) statements for AD executive leadership

Summary of O&M Team Members

6.3.5 Roles and Responsibilities

installing, configuring, and maintaining software products, both COTS and custom software. Experience in detailed analysis and configuration of operating system settings, especially as they affect installed software products. Experience with DevOps concepts and openness to increasing their DevOps competencies further when given the opportunity to do so. Experience working with customers to ensure requirements utilize best software installation and configuration practices, and to ensure software is installed according to specifications.

Required Experience:

· RedHat Linux 7+

· Operating system configuration best practices (including firewalls, network i/o, file management, etc.).

· Virtual Machines

· Familiarity with Kubernetes (OpenShift, AWS EKS or other)

· Familiarity with Service Mesh (ISTIO or other)

· Production monitoring tools (AppDynamics or other)

Preferred Experience:

· Kubernetes (RedHat OpenShift, AWS EKS, or other)

· Service Mesh Configuration (ISTIO or other)

· RedHat Products (JBoss Data Grid, JBoss EAP)

· General knowledge of Spring Boot and Cloud configuration

· Microservices architecture

· Tomcat, Netty, Nginx Primarily responsible for:

Support the installation, customization, and configuration of IRS Web Apps software assets throughout all environments.

Support Web Apps FDT product development to ensure operational readiness.

Provide expertise and services in installing, configuring, and maintaining products (for example, Web Apps applications, IRS Common libraries, COTS products, Open-Source products) and the operating system environment (RHEL virtual machines, OpenShift) within all environments at the IRS (for example, Dev, Test, Pre-Prod, Prod, DR).

Support operations and configurations of products and operating system environment through all stages in the SDLC.

Support deployment and test in lower environments (for example, update OpenShift and ISTIO configurations, create/maintain mount points, update file and directory permissions, setup jobs to manage logs) Support performance testing activities (for example, monitoring logs, monitoring server resources).

Create and maintain software configuration in lower environments and in production environments to ensure production readiness.

Develop and maintain scripts and other configuration files for all products and the operating system environment, across all Web Apps environments (for example, configuring java application to run as services, creating scripts to be run for ETL operations) Validate the technical stack is consistent across all Web Apps environments (for example, Dev, Test, Pre-Prod, Prod, DR, IEP) and all layers (OS configurations, scripts, COTS product configuration Provide direction, review, and make recommendation for the development of consistent scripts to configure, manage and deploy.

Willingness and ability to quickly learn and adapt to new technology stacks as needed.

Provide support, best practices, White Paper and COH documentation in the continued operations of the installation and maintenance of all Web Apps software assets in all environments.

Engage in troubleshooting for the issues and mitigations of all Web Apps software installations in all environments.

Provide services in installing, configuring, and maintaining all Web Apps software (COTS, Open-Source, and IRS-developers) in all environments at the IRS.

Provide all levels of OS support for all Web Apps servers pre-prod and production environments and shall participate in the following activities at the direction of the Government to achieve the desired outcomes.

Support current and future Web Apps products in all IRS Web Apps environments Provide 1st level Linux support of the business applications, middleware such as JBoss and COTS products.

Provide expertise in using system administration and monitoring tools for all IRS Web Apps environments.

Support activities involving maintenance and proper implementation of Transmittals.

Support for maintaining other related projects/applications on the Linux environment.

Support for maintaining connectivity and monitoring of interfaces with other IRS-internal and IRS-external systems (for example, legacy systems and RESTful endpoints).

Support of the problem/request ticket management and triaging issues associated with Web Apps software assets. Development or updates to knowledge articles.

Contractors will be required to provide knowledge transfer to include shoulder-to-shoulder training to IRS staff; establish/update documents and processes to support business application administrative duties for Web Apps software assets.

ECC, Test Administration Branch (TAB) will need a Senior IT Specialist to successfully implement the lower environment then transition to Production:

Rules and Guidelines for Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Reports completed daily for business application support which includes but are not limited to transition to implementation status, server monitoring/status, processing, and Filing Season.

Middleware and COTS software support which includes Operating System and other software assets for all Web Apps environments.

Support work that may include weekends.

Support through transition phase (Triaging KISAM tickets, SRT, and RCA).

ECC, Server Product and Application Support Branch 3 (SPASB3) will need an IT Specialist to successfully maintain and support the Production environment:

Rules and Guidelines for Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Reports completed daily for business application support includes front-door reports such as implementation, receipt, and transition status. Other reports could include server monitoring/status, processing, Filing Season checklists, etc.

Business Application Administrator (BAA) supports application, Operating System (OS) and other software assets in the Production environment.

Support shift work in a 24x7 IT environment Support production (Triaging KISAM tickets and participating in SRT and RCA).

Primarily responsible for:

· Skilled in IIBA best practices, in-depth analysis and system understanding.

· Ability to coach teams to Agile practices

· Ability to evaluate Agile methodology currently being followed by teams and propose and implement shift towards industry best practices.

· IRS institutional knowledge and in-depth understanding of the OLA program, delivery partners, and system design.

· Expert experience in requirements gathering, writing, tracing, and managing; i.e.. User Story Map, Use Case development, User Story writing, INVEST criteria, and dependency mapping.

· Analyzing propositions and assessing decision-making factors such as strategic alignment, cost/benefit, and risk

· Work closely with the Product Owners and Product Manager to define a product approach to meet the specified user need

· Developing product roadmaps, backlogs, and measurable success criteria, and writing user stories (i.e., can establish a path to delivery for breaking down stories)

· Define skill requirements and map internal, agency, and external (partners’ /specialist contractors) resources

· Analyze and map project risks approach and propose mitigation solutions

· Define how the predicted user and financial benefit can be realized, and how channel shift shall be measured

· Make recommendations for action against analysis performed

· Manage, coordinate, organize, update grammar, and maintain on a regular basis documentation that is clear, concise, organized, and easily accessible. This documentation will be for current and future reference and will utilize existing IRS tools, for example OneNote and README files. This should include system architecture diagrams, flow diagrams, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, Swagger docs, JavaDocs and other diagrams as appropriate. This documentation should be written so that future team resources can easily assimilate and understand the referenced topics. This documentation should be consolidated and contained within a systems-level, holistic documentation suite, with a hierarchical structure that is easy to navigate and understand at both the high and detailed level. Format, location, and paradigm of this documentation to be collaboratively defined along with AD management and tech advisors.

Required Experience:

· Java Development: JDK1.8 and 11, MDC, Http Filters, Loggers, Concurrence, Security, JPA, JUnit

· Spring Projects: MVC, Boot, WebFlux, Cloud, Test, Security, Cache, JPA

· Persistence: Relational Databases (Ex: Oracle, PostgreSQL), NoSQL Databases (ex: MongoDB, DynamoDB, etc)

· DevOps: Maven, Build pipelines (Jenkins or other), Code quality tools (SonarQube or other), Nexus, Git

· Client Development: HTML5, JavaScript Front-End Framework (React, Angular, Vue, Fluent or other), CSS3

Preferred Experience:

· JBoss EAP

· Client Development: Node.js, NPM, Babel, Webpack, React, Create React App, Jest, Testing Library, Selenium

· Standards:

· Web: CSS, HTML5

· Accessibility: WCAG 2.0 (Section 508/WCAG 2.0 AA) and WAI-ARIA

· Multi-Lingual: Accessibility Standards (a11y), Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n)

· Other Skills: Splunk, Excel, PowerPoint.

Primarily responsible for:

· Ability to perform all roles and responsibilities of both a Senior Back-End Developer and a Senior Front-End Developer, as defined in the corresponding sections in this document, when necessary.

Junior/Mid-level: Must have 2+ years of the experience below.

Full time professional front-end experience working on Agile teams and using modern, front end web development tools, techniques, and methods for the creation and deployment of user-facing interfaces. Must be comfortable working in an agile and lean environment to routinely deploy changes. Coordinate across FDTs to develop and support common, reusable libraries and solutions.

Required Experience:

· Client Development: Node.js, NPM, Babel, Webpack, JavaScript, React, Create React App, Jest, Testing Library, Selenium

· Standards:

· Web: CSS, HTML5

· Accessibility: WCAG 2.0 (Section 508/WCAG 2.0 AA) and WAI-ARIA

· Multi-Lingual: Accessibility Standards (a11y), Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n)

Primarily responsible for:

· Front end web development using modern techniques and frameworks (e.g., HTML5, CSS, CSS frameworks like LESS and SASS, Responsive Design, and those mentioned in Technical Skills).

· Creating and upgrading semantic HTML layouts using latest HTML standards.

· Experience with organizing information, content, and functionality of a web site so that it presents the best user experience it can, with information and services being easily usable and findable.

· Consuming RESTful APIs and ensure front-end interoperability with the target Java web application server environment (e.g., Spring Framework, Spring Boot, MVC, WebFlux, Test, Oracle, SQL, MongoDB).

· JavaScript development using modern standards, including strict mode compliance, modularization techniques and tools, and frameworks and libraries (e.g., jQuery, MV* frameworks such as Backbone.js and Ember.js, D3).

· Creating web layouts from static images.

· Creating views and templates in full-stack frameworks like Rails, Express, or Django.

· Writes software that adheres to organizational web, accessibility, and multi-lingual standards.

· Consider impact to 508 compliances when pulling Epics from Product backlog to Program backlog.

· Refactoring text copy into file formats commonly used for localization (i18n).

System Analysis, Design and Development:

· Design, build, and implement software applications, remediate defects, support activities to setup / validate infrastructure environments in support of Application team

· Authoring developer-friendly documentation (e.g., API documentation, deployment operations)

· Communicating technical concepts to a non-technical audience

· Conduct alternative analysis on software approved within the Web Apps boundary.

· Create and maintain code comments, Wikis, and other development artifacts in support of the application team

· Create and/or provide input for design artifacts for inclusion in design documents

· Follow Test-drive development (TDD) paradigm by creating and maintaining unit tests.

· Ensure design conforms to technical solution of the platform and program.

· Operate in a DevOps environment comprised of Maven, Jenkins, SonarQube, NPM.

· Quickly researching and learning new programming tools and techniques

· Assist automation test team with development of automation regression tests, as needed.

· Assist performance team with development of stubs and simulators, as needed.

· Remediating defects and providing Tier 3 level support.

· Support packaging of software as required.

· Use of version control systems, specifically Git and GitHub

· Using and working with open-source solutions and community Senior developer – coach, train and mentor other developers, both IRS and contractor, in all aspects of software development, as needed.

· Encourage and support collaborative work amongst all team members, both IRS employees and contractor employees. Ensure IRS developers and/or tech advisors are intimately engaged with all software development tasks on a regular basis.

· Produce clear, concise, centralized, organized, and easily accessible documentation for current and future reference utilizing existing IRS tools, for example OneNote and README files. This should include system architecture diagrams, flow diagrams, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, Swagger docs, JavaDocs and other diagrams as appropriate. This documentation should be written so that future technical resources can easily assimilate and understand the referenced topic. This documentation should be consolidated and contained within a systems-level, holistic documentation suite, with a hierarchical structure that is easy to navigate and understand at both the high and detailed level. Format, location, and paradigm of this documentation to be collaboratively defined along with AD management and tech advisors.

Agile Teamwork:

· Participate in daily stand-up meetings and team planning activities, helping estimate hours/size/complexity of work items in the backlog as needed.

· Communicate with Scrum Master for any issues, impediments, or roadblocks.

· Conduct Demos around individual stories, as needed.

· Confirm dependencies are satisfied, in preparation for Program Increment planning activities

· Ensure Enabler Stories for infrastructure, platform enhancements, and Technical Debt are identified, and inform/collaborate with ES

· Ensure tasks are appropriately updated/current in Rational CLM.

· Participate in daily stand-up meetings and team planning activities, helping estimate hours/size/complexity of work items in the backlog as needed

· Participate in team retrospectives.

· Review Readiness and Acceptance criteria and dependencies (for high-level Epics), as needed

· Translates business requirements into stories with…