RFI No. 19JA8023N0002 Agile Teaching and SOP Development Services.pdf

Request for Information (RFI) No. 19JA8023N0002

Request for Information

Agile Teaching and SOP Development Services

U.S. Embassy Tokyo, Japan

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) NOTICE ONLY. This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only and it does not constitute a

Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future.

It is not to be construed as a commitment by the U.S. Government (USG) for any actual procurement of materials, devices, or services.

Respondents are advised that the USG will not pay of any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI. All costs associated with responding to this RFI are solely at the responding parties’ expense. Respondents are solely responsible for properly marking and clearly identifying any proprietary information or trade secrets contained within their response. The USG will not be liable for or suffer any consequential damages for any proprietary information not properly marked and clearly identified. Proprietary information received in response to these sources sought will be safeguarded and handled in accordance with applicable USG regulations.

PURPOSE

The U.S. Embassy’s goals in selecting a provider include increasing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction through the upskilling of Mission Japan’s information technology workforce to best utilize existing information systems and create more effective standard operating procedures.

Background Information

The U.S. Embassy is located in Tokyo, Japan, and supports five U.S.

Consulates across the country (Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, and

Naha) and a language school in Yokohama. The Embassy, Consulates, and language school have around 700 employees with around 500 requiring a mobile device. There IT service desk supports a customer demand of 5,000 a year. The switchboard supports demand of 5,000 a month. There are over 3,600 assets associated to this IT Service

Desk.

The employees primarily travel within Japan and occasionally travel internationally for temporary duty.

General Conditions

This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only and it does not constitute an RFP or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. The

RFI is regarding a Statement of Objectives (SOO) that is being developed. This work will not require the purchase of additional technology. The U.S. Government is looking for comments and questions to this RFI and any potential sources that may be interested.

Requested Information

The focus of this RFI is to seek information from existing consortia and individual firms regarding Agile Project Management, Standard

Operating Procedures Development, and Work Instruction Documents based on commercial and/or popular standards, and which might incentivize competition among potential service providers. The purpose of this initiative is to learn and apply best practices documentations and agile management to rapidly evolve. Interested responders shall identify their capabilities, prior performance, and approaches to the following:

• The anticipated contract period of performance is 4 months plus three 90-day options to renew.

• The ability to initiate additional services under any of the specific plans below at any point during the contract period of performance. The provider shall allow for any such services initiated mid contract period to be terminated at the end of the base contract period without additional cancellation fees.

• Specific per the narrative below.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this (contract/task order) is to utilize digital service techniques to adopt ITIL 4 framework, Lean Six Sigma, DevOps, ISO 20,000, Help Desk Institute (HDI), and Agile methodology into a high-performing and quality-focused

Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) system. Success will optimize current operations, create capacities for additional services and training, and develop and grow 44 personnel team’s skills to continue and advance in the 21st century information technology management practices. The contracted Project is to document our process and equally about experiences and experimenting with industry-leading Practices.

This SOO is predicated on the fact that U.S Mission Japan stakeholders do not understand Agile, ITSM, ITIL 4, Lean Six

Sigma, ISO 20,000, or DevOps. However, they are familiar with

User Experience (UX) design thinking, human-centered design

(HCD), have combined 1,100 years of Service Desk experience, and are customer and quality-focused. At completion, necessary job responsibilities or individual development programs (IDPs) within the team may have to be updated or redefined according to lessons learning Agile, ITSM, ITIL 4, Lean Six Sigma ISO 20,000 and/or human-centered design roles. Stakeholders are comfortable with modern technology concepts, change, and quality to adapt the delivery of a digital services with the new skills.

To achieve this goal, quality partners who are certified in Lean

Six Sigma and ITIL 4 and have experience managing successful agile projects shall be able to establish and execute a framework for user centered design, usability research, and agile implementation while leading a positive experience to the multidisciplinary and multicultural team and community that will be learning the topics for the first time. Japanese and English are required. Knowledge of Agile, ITSM, Lean, DevOps, HDI, and

ISO 20,000 is also required. The Contractor will need to do this respectfully of local cultural norms, change aversions, and office dynamics. Do no harm.

OUTPUTS

The resulting contract will be considered successful when the following outputs have been delivered:

• Identification of 10 customer value streams for mapping and optimization beyond the initial 50 provided by U.S. Mission Japan stakeholders and sponsor.

• Developing 60 level 3 mapped Lean Six Sigma value streams of the current operating state. And 60 optimized and tested level 5 mappings that include the to be state that reducing toil, improving the User Experience, reducing Time To

Delivery (TTD), reducing Time To Respond (TTR), reducing Mean Time Between Systems Incident

(MTBSI), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), or Mean Time

Between Failures (MTBF). The final value stream will be included in respective Standard Operating

Procedures.

• The creation of Standard Operating Procedures

(SOP), Work Instructions Documents (WID), and

Improvements as Knowledge Packages. Every SOP may contain 10-15 WIDs and 2-3 Non-Technical

Customers Knowledge articles. All Knowledge shall be stored and shared in the production Service

Now ITSM technology. Each article must be User

Acceptance Tested (UAT) by the respective customer and or SME, and corrections made for readability, policy, and use.

• A Standard Operations Procedures template can be provided as a PDF with the Agency letterhead. All future updates shall be required in Microsoft

Word and also uploaded in Service Now. All future

SOP shall be improved off that initial template and include; authorizing program manager, authorizing portfolio manager, previous mapped value stream, six sigma level 5 optimized value stream, revision control, known stakeholders, associated policies, associated SOPs, associated

WIDs, table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, introduction, purpose, scope, roles and responsibilities, program governance roles, process governance roles, quality control plan, expected procedures of the value stream, task time measurement, improvements process, appendix list of acronyms, appendix list of suggested training in the respective topic, and stored locations.

• All work instruction adheres to current policy or highlight that they are not in adherence.

• All detected Continual Service Improvements (CSI) are registered iteratively, tracked, and worked within the U.S Mission Japan CSI process and life cycle.

• The team deploys an initial digital version of the product in the development and production environments, respectively. Conduct usability research with end users to determine whether the success criteria were met.

• Determine and document what is necessary to create the levels of optimization can be reached within policies or currently configured technologies through the solution(s), if successful, or a plan to pivot to a different value stream if unsuccessful.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

U.S. Mission Japan would like to document in Standard

Operating Procedures and Work Instruction Documents the

Operations of 52+ customer value streams. The process of developing the Knowledge and moving it to operations shall be in an Agile project management methodology so that the teams and customers who are stakeholders in this learn and gain insights into how to manage change using this method.

Additionally, the U.S. Embassy is looking for cost analysis and returns on investment (ROI) analysis of the work done under this contract, broken down by value stream and multiplied by annual expected customer demand over five years. Once optimized, how much customer disruption was avoided? Were error rates/defects reduced with SOPs, Workflows, and WIDs. Was quality and customer experience sustained and/or improved? How many CSI were registered in backlog? How many CSI where actualized during the period of performance? The synthesis will be used to determine the viability of further investment in Lean Six Sigma, ITIL 4, DevOps, and Agile as effective frameworks for service desks and projects management of this scale.

Additionally, the employee benefits, sentiments, and/or experience shall be benchmarked at initial phase and trended throughout the performance period with the intent to gradually improve and provide value.

Eleven critical value streams have been identified and shall be completed in a manner that improves user experience, quality, and provides additional customer

Knowledge:

• Incident Management (Service Now, Email, Chat, Phone)

• Service Delivery (Provision Account.)

• Change Management

• Walk Up Experience

• Problem Management

• Visit Support Coordination

• Customer Endpoint Deployment

• Infrastructure Endpoint Deployment

• Continues Improvement

• Asset Management

• Customer Onboarding / Off-Boarding Experience

All above lack structured SOPs or WIDs and some are not currently being done.

Four additional user stories include:

• Testing

• Customer Relationship Management

• Customer Phone Bill Notification

• Distribution List Modification

The above four user stories (or some of these user stories) may be part of later user stories identified to increase help desk optimization with automation. Most activities of the help desk are completed manually.

BACKGROUND

U.S Mission Japan is modernizing and centralizing its

Service Desk. ITIL 4, Lean Six Sigma, DevOps, ISO 20,000, and agile are promising frameworks and methods that can be used to optimize the existing processes and mitigate the need for additional labor as the office absorbs a backlog of other services desks and/or new services. The adoption and learning of the skills can free up capacity for innovation and additional skills development. These MVP pilots the latest frameworks and methods with a team versed in customer and quality focus. If successful, the adoption of the WIDs, Mapped Value Streams, Positive Change

Experience, and SOPs by this project will be used in future

MVPs and provide an improved employee experience.

SCOPE

The MVP consists of four 30-day Sprints working in conjunction with U.S Mission Japan Service Desk Subject

Matter Experts, Pilot Users, Washington Subject Matter

Experts Testers, and Deployment teams. These experts will be made available as needed to help the MVP succeed.

Functional Area 1: Discovery and Design Objective: U.S

Mission Japan SMEs and the Contractor will collaborate to determine how the problem will be solved through digitalization, utilize user-centered design techniques and agile product management methods to create an approach to making the Help Desk more optimized, adopt ITIL 4 framework, gain experience in Lean Six Sigma and codified through metrics. The appropriate metrics will be measured at the beginning of the project and after the pilot users have used the resulting Knowledge and Process iteration.

Any corrections to the approach shall be documented and used to revise the user value streams and Knowledge for the next iteration.

Tasks:

• Conduct customer value stream discovery across the

Portfolio.

• Create a backlog of value streams associated with services and practices used by the office.

• Determine prioritization ranking by highest customer demand and impact.

• Codify the objectives in metrics used to improvements in Help Desk efficiency.

The successful solution, at a minimum, shall also include the following best practices as highlighted in the digital service playbook: Understand what people need.

The Contractor shall begin this digital service project by exploring and pinpointing the needs of the Service Desk

Analysts (SDAs) and Subject Matter Experts (SME) who will use the service, and the ways the service will fit into their lives. The Contractor shall continually test the products with end users to ensure delivery is focused on meeting their needs and improving the User Experience

(U/X).

In the delivery of this effort, the Contractor shall:

• Early in the project, the Contractor shall spend time with current and prospective users of the service (SMEs and the pilot team).

• Use a various qualitative and quantitative research methods to determine people’s goals, needs, and behaviors.

• Develop and test mock-ups or prototypes of solutions with real people, in their role and with customer demand if possible.

• Document the findings about user goals, needs, behaviors, and preferences.

• Share findings with the team and agency leadership

• Create a prioritized list of tasks the user is trying to accomplish, also known as "user-stories" to be utilized in the agile development process.

• During development, continuously user-test the MVP to ensure it meets user needs and provides an improved experience.

• Measure the resulting efficiencies with the pilot team and project those efficiencies on the entire project to show the result of using the Knowledge.

Functional Area 2: Development of Minimum Viable Product

Objective: Through agile project development methods, a minimum viable product shall be developed and released to end users.

1. Utilize an agile development method to write and manage epics, user stories, acceptance criteria.

2. Conduct iteration retrospectives, release planning, backlog grooming, and other common activities associated with iterative design and agile methodologies.

3. Implement best practice methods for automated testing and code reviews.

4. Work with the project sponsor to develop or manage continuous integration, code management processes, security, 508 compliance, privacy or any other agency policies that need to be incorporated to release the projects in a live environment.

5. Use the U.S Mission Japan provided Service Now development environment in the cloud to detect gaps where additional customer value could be gained with better integration with other systems.

6. Deploy the system to the OpenNet production environment for U.S Mission Japan testers, pilot users, and non-technical customers.

7. Test solutions with end users and conduct user research activities.

8. Create and track metrics to determine whether the delivered solution meets end users’ needs and solves agency problem statement to some degree.

9. As a result of the feedback provide recommendations on what should be modified in future versions of the product.

The successful solution, at a minimum, shall also include the following best practices as highlighted in the digital service playbook:

Address the whole experience, from start to finish

The Contractor shall ensure we need understand the different ways people will interact with our services, including the actions they take online, through a mobile application, on a phone, in chat, in email, or in person.

Every encounter — whether it's online or offline - shall move the user closer towards their goal.

1. Understand the different points at which people will interact with the service –both online and in person.

2. Identify pain points in the current way users interact with the service, and prioritize these according to user needs.

3. Design the digital parts of the service so that they are integrated with the offline touchpoints people use to interact with the service.

4. Develop metrics that will measure how well the service is meeting user needs at each step of the service.

Make it simple and intuitive

Successful delivery of this contract requires that the services of and products delivered shall not be stressful, confusing, or daunting. Therefore, the Contractor shall build and release a digital MVP that is simple and intuitive enough that users succeed the first time, unaided.

In the delivery of this effort, the Contractor shall:

1. Use a simple and flexible design style guide for the service. Use UiPath best practices to build production-quality bots for the pilot team.

2. Use the design style guide consistently for related digital services.

3. Give users clear information about where they are in each step of the process.

4. Follow accessibility best practices to ensure all people can use the service.

5. Provide users with a way to exit and return later to complete the process.

6. Use language that is familiar to the user and easy to understand.

7. Use language and design consistently throughout the service, including online and offline touchpoints.

Use data to drive decisions

At every stage of a project, the Contractor shall measure how well our service is working for our users both in the technical team and other customers. This includes measuring how well a system performs and how people interact with it in real-time. These metrics shall be reported to the U.S.

Mission Program Managers to find issues and identify which defect fixes and improvements shall be prioritized. Along with monitoring tools, a feedback mechanism shall be in place for people to report issues directly.

1. Monitor system-level resource utilization in real time.

2. Monitor system performance in real-time. (e.g., response time, latency, throughput, and error rates)

3. Track concurrent users in real-time, and monitor user behaviors in the aggregate to determine how well the service meets user needs.

4. Provide metrics which may be published internally.

5. Provide metrics which may be published externally.

Functional Area 3: Retrospective: What worked, what didn’t, what to do next

Objective: Following each iteration, the government and

Contractor team come together to understand from a project viewpoint and identify improvement actions.

• Conduct a project retrospective activity that analyzes data gathered during performance around goals, timelines, budgets, major events, and successes or failures.

• Determine what roadblocks were mitigated and which ones still exist that need to be addressed.

• Provide or update the Product Backlog for scaling the

MVP through continuous design and agile processes.

• Ensure all system documentation, user stories, acceptance criteria, and test scripts are finalized.

Example Iteration Plan:

Sprint 1 (2 Weeks/Month 1): Learn Environment, Business, Policy, Process, and Available Technology

• Develop and Deliver Project Charter, Work

Breakdown Structure (WBS), Work Breakdown

Dictionary, Organization Breakdown Structure, and a Project Schedule

• Host Premortem

• Host Stakeholder and Customer Kickoff

• Meet with SMEs on known User Stories/value streams

• Identify Key Technologies (Service Now, Power

Automate, MS Teams, One Note)

• Identify Key Services Desk Metrics

• Identify Key Services Desk Analyst Needs

• Identify and Scope User Stories

• Assemble and Prioritize Value Steam backlog

• Develop the ten user stories and have the

Knowledge Package ready for test

• Retrospective

Sprint 2 (2 Weeks/Month 1): Receive Feedback

• Develop the 10 user stories and have the

Knowledge Package ready for test

• Learn Environment (FRAME and Production)

• Receive Feedback from Test (SDAs and/or

Customers) on 10 User Stories - Provide any

Provide any Rework/Improvements

• Receive Feedback from Sponsors and Stakeholders on Project Artifacts – Provide any

Rework/Improvements

• Deliver 5 Knowledge Packages to Pilot Team

Sprint 3 (2 Weeks/Month 2): Work Within Knowledge

Development Lifecycle

• Meet with SMEs and Customers to identify additional User Stories

• Scope User Stories

• Receive Feedback from Test (SDAs and/or

Customers) on 10 User Stories - Provide any

Rework/Improvements

• Develop and deliver 20 new Knowledge Packages

• Deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Pilot Team

• Develop the 5 user stories and have Knowledge

Package ready for test

Sprint 4 (2 Weeks/Month 2): Optimize the Business

• Identify 10 New User Stories to reduce the SDA human interaction by 10 percent in conjunction with Pilot Team/SMEs

• Develop a Backlog of 10 high-value user stories

• Provide any Rework from Test Results

• Develop and deliver 20 new Knowledge Packages

• Deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Pilot Team

• Develop the 5 user stories and have Knowledge

Package ready for test

Sprint 5 (2 Weeks/Month 3): Optimize the Business

• Identify 5 New User Stories to Continue Making

SDAs Job Easier

• Deliver Backlog of Remaining User Stories to

Management

• Develop and deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Test

• Deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Pilot Team

• Provide any Rework from Test Results

Sprint 6 (2 Weeks/Month 3): Wrap up

SDAs Job Easier

• Deliver Backlog of Remaining User Stories to

Management

• Develop and deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Test

• Provide any Rework from Test Results

Sprint 7 (2 Weeks/Month 4):

SDAs Job Easier

• Provide any Rework from Test Results

• Develop and deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Test

Sprint 8 (2 Weeks/Month 4): Wrap up and Closing

SDAs Job Easier

• Deliver Backlog of Remaining User Stories to

Management

• Develop and deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Test

• Deliver 10 Knowledge Packages to Pilot Team

• Provide any Rework from Test Results

• Host Close-Out Postmortem

• Develop and deliver Lessons Learn Report (Post

Implementation Report)

• Optimization and User Experience Report Based on

Service Desk Metrics

• Standard Operating Procedure and Work

Instructions Documents for Value Steam identification, optimization, testing, and enabling in production

Instructions and Target Dates

Responses (in English) must be submitted via email in Microsoft Word or PDF format. In addition, a cover page may be included to describe the Responders experience in the areas of interest described above.

Request that the RFI response be submitted no later than 4:00 p.m., Wednesday, February 1, 2023 (Japan Standard Time).

Responses to this RFI are requested to be submitted by email to Ayaka

Ogawara, OgawaraAX@state.gov.

Responses received after identified closing date announced above may not be considered in the U.S. Government’s analyses.

It is important to make sure the submission is made in specific size and format; in MS-Word 2007/2010 or MS-Excel 2007/2010 or Adobe

Acrobat (pdf) file format. The file size must not exceed 15MB. If the file size should exceed the 15MB, the submission must be made in separate files and attached to separate emails with less than 15MB each.

mailto:OgawaraAX@state.gov