VA118-17-R-2324-A00003005.docx

VETERAN - FOCUSED INTEGRATION PROCESS (VIP)

Major COTS Program Deployment Guide

1 Overview

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veteran-focused Integration Process (VIP) is a Lean-Agile framework that services the interests of Veterans through the efficient streamlining of activities that occur within the enterprise.

Acknowledging that there is not a “one size fits all” solution, the VIP artifact requirements can be tailored to accommodate the unique needs of Major Programs[footnoteRef:2] in an effective manner. Major Programs with a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution require execution on an accelerated timeline and the flexibility to incorporate artifacts provided by software vendors. For Major Programs where an internal (i.e., non-COTS) solution is deemed necessary, the regular VIP process should be applied. To determine if the COTS product meets the criteria for a Major Program, the following criteria must be met: [2: https://www.va.gov/op3/Enterprise_Program_Management_Office.asp]

1. It must be classified as a VA Class I Enterprise Application

2. It must acquire an enterprise software license

3. It must have funding appropriated for acquisition and deployment Otherwise, the most current standard VIP process will apply.

This VIP Major COTS Program Deployment Guide outlines how the VA will apply the streamlined VIP lifecycle to configure and deploy acquired COTS solutions. Deviations from this guide along with name and office responsible for deviation must be included within respective project plans and approved by the VIP Office before proceeding.

2 Streamlined VIP Lifecycle

The streamlined VIP lifecycle for major COTS programs is designed to adapt the pre-designed artifacts from vendors, allowing for valuable time and resources to be focused on the configuration of the solution to meet the quality and security standards of VA. VA Leadership involvement may expedite the intake of the request due to congressional mandate or administration priority. The Project Planning component of the Project Phase can be accelerated due to vendor support. It is anticipated that project management plans developed by the vendor have been validated through the vendor’s deployment experience and likely require relatively minor modifications to best fit the environment.

Configuration and Interface Development within the Product Phase can be significantly shortened as the products predominantly require configuration and interface testing (please reference VIP Major COTS Programs Interface Development Guide). Release preparation requires much of the same rigor as applied to internally developed solutions to ensure the product meets VA standards.

The VA Project Manager will work with the vendor to ensure security standards and contingency plan requirements are documented in the compliance epics/security requirements, and are met prior to release.

Figure 1. VIP Lifecycle for Major COTS Programs: 5-Gate Approach

2.1 COTS Vendor 5-Gate Approach

The standard VIP Major COTS Programs Lifecycle process shown above allows VA to maximize value while working with vendors for program implementation. The 5-Gate Approach ensures the completion of key milestones before proceeding to the next step of the lifecycle. Pre-determined VIP artifacts (see Table 1) must be completed prior to advancing to the next gate. This allows for the evaluation of critical items and key risk factors by client and vendor leadership. If a project does not complete the artifacts at a specific gate, the VA Project Manager will make the determination if the project moves forward based on available information and supporting documentation. The project may move forward in various circumstances however missing criteria must still be completed.

The flexibility of VIP artifact requirements allows for major programs to leverage existing documentation provided by the vendor and focus resources towards the configuration needed for successful implementation.

Table 1 VIP Artifacts for Major COTS Programs provides a quick reference for those artifacts that are required by VIP and/or VA Compliance Epics and those to be provided by the vendor.

Table 1 VIP Artifacts for Major COTS Programs

Note: Critical Decision 1 & 2 PowerPoints have been removed for VIP for Major COTS Programs Vendor-provided artifacts will be accepted if they meet the criteria outlined in the artifact description below:

Table 2 VIP Vendor Artifact Description for Major COTS Programs

2.2 Accelerated Project Planning

Figure 2. Accelerated Project Planning The initial project planning stages are to be defined for the vendor within the Performance Work Statement (PWS). Vendors are to ensure that the project planning stage will align to client goals, resources, and project plans. Project planning may include current-state assessments, leadership debriefs, individual site kick-offs, and a value workshop to establish how successful implementation will be measured.

2.3 Gate 1: Project Initiation

Figure 3. Gate 1: Project Initiation VA’s Gate 1 (G1) Event occurs when a product is ready to begin the process of moving to the Product Phase. This is done to acquire contract resources for the Product Phase if required. The approval is given by the VIP Triad, defined as the Portfolio Director, the Product Owner and the Receiving Organization. This must be noted within the project management plan along with the titles and offices for each approving member. For major COTS programs, business requirements are used to define the scope of the project, which feeds the Project Management Plan. Compliance requirements are used to ensure requirements are met by the vendor documentation, or that they are incorporated into the Vendor PWS or Service Level Agreement (SLA).

At G1, the vendor must meet the following set requirements. The documentation to support that these requirements are met must be captured in the corresponding VIP artifact.

Please refer to VIP Major COTS Program Interface Development Guide for guidance on interface architecture artifacts. The G1 occurs prior to the G2: Validate. VA will review all vendor artifacts to confirm the VA document requirements have been met.

2.4 Gates 2 & 3: Product Configuration and Interface Development

Figure 4. Configuration and Interface Development VIP provides a flexible development framework in which Agile teams can release as rapidly as they are capable. Given that Major COTS Programs are engaged with a product vendor, these product “builds” are replaced by deployment waves as the system has already been developed by the vendor. The duration of the deployment waves must be agreed upon by the vendor and then client.

Prior to reaching G2, the vendor must ensure that key stakeholders are aligned in their understanding of necessary adjustments to workflows and configuration of the tool to enable successful implementation. Please refer to VIP Major COTS Program Interface Development Guide for guidance on configuration, interface development, integration, and data migration from VistA to Major COTS programs.

2.4.1 Gate 2: Validate

Figure 5. Gate 2: Validate During the Validate phase, additional VA-required documents[footnoteRef:3] should be made available by the vendor for VA review and approval. G2 requires that a product or program demonstrate: [3: See applicable VIP Compliance Epics.]

2.4.2 Testing & Gate 3: Train

Figure 6. Testing and Gate 3: Train The VIP process Gate 3 (G3) Event occurs after all (pre-IOC) testing is complete and the Product Manager believes the build or product is ready for release and addresses all relevant compliance requirements. This decision event should answer the following questions:

· What are the systems this product interfaces with and is it compatible with all of them?

· Who are the stakeholders and teams directly affected by this new product, and are they aware of the impending release?

· Has all required regression and end-to-end testing been completed by the vendor, and all documentation updated?

The VA Program Manager reviews the full product and if nothing significant changes in the product’s technical environment or security profile, approvals are not required, by VIP policy, for future releases. This means the only release that requires a full G3 review is the first release into production. Once this first release occurs, subsequent G3 events may be held at the discretion of the Portfolio Director [or designee, as found in approved Delegation of Authority (DOA) memo], simply to ensure the proper requirements have been updated and the appropriate parties are prepared for the additional release(s).

G3 requires that a product or program demonstrate:

2.5 Gate 4: Activate & Gate 5: Measure

Figure 8 Release Preparation, Training & Release Activities in the release phase include preparing final release communications, making final environment updates if necessary, and finalizing site logistics. The VA PM will be required to provide updates to the enterprise release schedule as appropriate

G4 requires that a product or program demonstrate:

The goal of the final gate, Gate 5: Measure, is to ensure that the targeted value of the project was achieved. This can be confirmed by the following:

1. Super-user and end-user’s competency, confidence and satisfaction targets were achieved

2. Value objectives are trending toward goals

3. Performance and operational metrics are trending positively and that no unresolved significant solution issues remain

4. Issues and changes are being managed effectively

5. IT and VHA support staff and end user training is complete

3 VIP Reporting Requirements

To ensure comparable data, all VIP reporting requirements must be adhered to for major programs. Further detail on these requirements, as extracted from the VIP Guide 3.0, are provided below.

3.1 VIP Dashboard and External Reporting Requirements

VA has several external reporting commitments which it must continue to meet. These take the form of ad hoc reports (generated from the VIP Dashboard) for various external customers like the Government Accountability Office, the Office of Inspector General, etc.

In addition to these ad hoc reporting responsibilities, there is a major reporting responsibility called the Monthly OMB Major IT Business Case Details Submission. OMB requires agencies to submit product data (approximately 40 data elements per product activity) from the Agency directly to the OMB Federal IT Dashboard via Extensible 23 (XML) transfer. The ability to meet our monthly 300B reporting requirements will still be met by VA via the VIP Dashboard. Product teams are required to make timely updates to the dashboard regarding costs and schedule. Product Managers should ensure that actual start and completion dates are entered into the dashboard within 3 business days of the planned dates. For example, a build is scheduled to complete on Jan. 12, 2017, which is a Thursday. The product must input the actual delivery date no later than Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, close of business.

3.2 IBM® Rational Tools Suite

The use of the IBM® Rational Tools Suite is critical to the success of VIP, as well as the thorough streamlining of release processes. Teams must use Rational Tools Suite and fully populate the tool with all required product information. The Rational Tools Suite allows data to be entered once and then reused multiple times as “data views” utilized by various Rational users. Proper use of Rational Tools supports one of the goals of VIP, which is to provide traceability among requirements fulfillment, requirements testing, and testing results. However, if a major project plan must deviate from use of Rational Tools Suite, it must be explicitly delineated in the respective project plan to be approved by the VIP office and as stated in section1. In addition, the responsible decision maker(s) for the deviation must be recorded within the project plan as well.

The IBM® Rational Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) Toolset will be used to provide a single Agile product lifecycle management tool to track execution details. All OI&T products will be expected to follow this requirement. This requirement includes the expectation that all OI&T products follow the OI&T Agile product management process and use the Rational Tools Suite to:

· Manage scheduled product sprints and backlog

· Manage product requirements

· Manage product risks and issues

· Manage product configurations and changes

· Manage product test plans and execution

· Manage product planning and engineering documentation

· Manage /administer source control and baselines The IBM Rational Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) Product Data Repository will be used to provide a single authoritative product data repository. All OI&T product data and artifacts will be required to be managed in this data and artifact repository. Additionally, the OI&T Release Management Office will support the new, single release process for all of OI&T and will begin looking for necessary product data and artifacts in the appropriate Rational Tools repository.

OI&T products that have not previously engaged the OI&T Rational Support Team for implementation of the Rational Tools in the VA are required to initiate contact with the team to arrange for usage. For those products that are not currently compliant, phased implementation of Rational Tools use will be arranged.

3.3 VIP Request (VIPR)

The OI&T VIPR system is used by ITAMs and other designated individuals to provide a single intake process to request new and changed business needs to current or future automated business processes. VIPR accepts requests to enhance existing information or technology solutions or to develop/acquire a new solution based on changes to workflows, business needs, policies, legislative changes, and other drivers to meet VA business needs. VIPR starts the process of capturing high-level Epics as statements of need for clinical, business, administrative, operational, and/or infrastructure that support the day-to-day operations and work activities of the VA. As an interim solution to support VIP, this Microsoft SharePoint-based application serves as a central repository for stakeholder business requirements submitted for new solutions deliveries. Additional policy and procedure on use of VIPR is available on the VIPR site.

3.4 POLARIS Enterprise Release Calendar

The POLARIS Enterprise Release Calendar has been implemented across OI&T as the single authoritative release calendar for all of OI&T, and serves as a central repository for production platform change information, release management coordination and deployment activity scheduling. The POLARIS calendaring process and tool must be used to track software installations, hardware replacements, system upgrades, patch release and implementation, special works in progress, and other deployment events in the VA production environment. The installation of commercial software into the production environment used by VA users would be recorded and tracked on the POLARIS calendar.

The VA PM will be required to provide updates to the enterprise release schedule.

Appendix A: DOD Technical Design Process Alignment

In anticipation of the insertion of VA software in the DOD system, the DOD Technical Design Process is detailed below to facilitate process alignment.

Figure X.

The DOD Technical Design Review Process entails 5 steps:

1. System Requirements Review (SRR)

1. Integrated Baseline Review (IBR): Review of scope, schedule and cost

1. Product Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR): Chief systems engineering technical review of ports, protocols, hardening, STIG, etc.

1. Technical Readiness Review (TRR)

1. Production Readiness Review (PRR) image3.emf image4.emf image5.png image6.png image7.png image8.png image9.png image10.png image1.emf image2.png