Vendor Conference 06-21-2012
Agenda Welcome and Introductions TRA.NET Project Overview
Key Dates Bid Process Q&A
Key Contacts All emails should go to
[email protected] All news and information will be posted at
www.MinnesotaTRA.org Mailing Address: Attn: Tim Maurer 60 Empire Dr, Suite #400 St. Paul, MN 55103
Primary Project Team Members Laurie Hacking, Executive Director – Project Sponsor Karen Williamson, Assistant Executive Director – Project Sponsor Tim Maurer – Planning Director Mark Roemhild – IT Director
Overview
Agency TRA was created in 1931. TRA is a medium-size agency that administers a defined benefit retirement fund intended to provide retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to Minnesota’s public educators.
As of June, 30, 2011, TRA had 579 reporting units; 76,755 active members; 38,433 inactive members; and 53,537 retirees, survivors, beneficiaries, and disabilitants receiving monthly benefits. TRA has assets totaling $17.3 billion and processes a monthly benefit payroll of nearly $130 million.
TRA.NET Project TRA completed a major reengineering project in 2006, which went a long
way towards helping us meet our mission of being an outstanding retirement system pursuing benefits and services that exceed members’ expectations. That project used Delphi development IDE and language. This has created maintenance problems for our IT departments as there is a shrinking user base and correspondingly small and shrinking pool of technical resources. To address this problem, TRA decided to upgrade its current system with Microsoft Visual Studio.NET. This is one of the most widely-used IDEs and a growing language (C-Sharp), thus providing a correspondingly large pool of talented technical resources. Our original intent was to keep TRA.NET an in-house project. However, after the loss of several key resources, and a desire to complete the project within two years, we decided to seek external resources for the design phase of the project.
RFP TRA is seeking to partner with a vendor to provide a team of business
analysts to plan, manage and execute the functional design component of our TRA.NET project. This will be accomplished by researching and analyzing the current
system and providing functional specifications reflecting the requirements defined by TRA.NET project goals.
RFP Goal The goal of the RFP is to secure a highly experienced consultant team consisting of a lead business analyst, business analysts and a quality assurance analyst to work with TRA staff and internal business analysts, SMEs and developers on our TRA.NET project. This phased project consists of 60+ units involving the application for and calculation of TRA’s defined benefit plan annuity payments, benefit payment adjustments, monthly annuity payment process, scheduling member services, and various correspondence generation. The contractors will be tasked with providing analysis, documentation, screen designs, business process flows, testing and training of our internal business analyst and testing teams. There will be a three-week discovery phase with a 24-month timeline for completion of the designs and testing for the project.
Project Methodology TRA has adopted an iterative waterfall methodology for this project given the project’s size and complexity. Although structured, TRA’s methodology is flexible to project pressures and external factors. The following illustration provides very high-level overview of the iterative waterfall approach.
Project Technical Environment The TRA.NET project is built as a web-based, multi-tier system running on Windows 2008 servers and hosted by Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7. Besides the production environment, TRA also has regions for user acceptance testing(UAT), quality assurance and development. Multi-tier SOA-based system Presentation Tier: Web-based using Microsoft MVC Framework Service Tier: WCF services built using WSSF design pattern Information Tier: SQL Server as the database w/ Entity Framework access layer
Workflow integration using WWF Imaging integration using WPF Change Management: TFS
Current Project Status TRA seeks to acquire professional business analyst services from an experienced vendor or organization that can undertake and carry out business requirements gathering and delivery of use cases including documentation, screen designs, data conversion plan, business process flows, testing and training of our internal business analyst and testing teams to complete the TRA.NET project in a scheduled timeframe approved by the TRA Executive Team. TRA has separated the TRA.NET project into two phases. Phase One has approximately 30 units involving our accounting and data
integrity business units. This phase of the project is projected to be 50% completed by August 2012. Phase Two has approximately 30 units involving our member benefits and
member services business units. Initial brainstorming JADs have been completed for this phase.
Project Schedule Activity
Date
RFP posted
6/11/2012
Vendor conference
6/21/2012
Responses due
7/3/2012
Initial vendor evaluation and scoring
7/5/2012 – 7/19/2012
Vendor interviews
7/23/2012 -7/27/2012
Vendor interview evaluation and scoring
7/30/2012 – 8/3/2012
Final vendor selection
8/6/2012 - 8/7/2012
Vendor notification / Contract development
8/8/2012 – 8/29/2012
Projected project start
9/4/2012
Projected project end
9/3/2014
Contract Terms This contract would be based on a time and materials bid over
the contract period. There is an anticipated initial discovery period of three weeks. The timeframe for total completion of this project is expected to be 24 months. When the contract is awarded service, the discovery phase must
start within two weeks and must be no longer than three weeks in duration. This request for proposal does not obligate the State to award a
contract or complete the project, and the State reserves the right to cancel the solicitation if it is considered to be in its best interest.
Evaluation Criteria All responses received by the deadline will be evaluated by a team of TRA staff. The factors and weighting on which proposals will be judged are:
Criteria
Weightage
Expressed understanding of project objectives
15%
Deliverables and work plan
15%
Company experience with TRA or other pension systems
15%
Qualifications/experience of personnel working on the project
25%
Cost detail
30%
Finalists may be invited for a round of interviews. The factors and weighting for the interviews may include those of the original proposal in additional to others at the discretion of TRA. It is anticipated that the evaluation and selection will be completed by August 27th, 2012.
[email protected]
All Vendor Questions Who will do the actual programming? And what will the number of such staff be? Programming for this project will be done by TRA staff. We currently have 5 positions available for the development effort.
The RFP speaks to Phase 1 being 50% completed by August 2012; with a start date of September, 2012 - that seems contradictory - could you explain? It is estimated by the end of August 2012 50% of the units in Phase 1 of the project will be completed. It is yet to be determined if the selected vendor will start with the remaining Phase 1 units or start with Phase 2.
What BPMN tool is TRA expecting the consultant to use? Is TRA staff experienced in it? IT? Users? TRA is using Visio Premium 2010, with an in-house, customized BPMN template. TRA business analysts are experienced with it. The diagrams are hosted on SharePoint 2010 Visio Web Services so that users can access, browse and validate BPMN diagrams without having knowledge of Visio, and without having Visio installed. TRA has developed templates for standard screen behavior and flows; these are used as a starting point for the development of new units.
All Vendor Questions (contd.) We understand the need of this RFP is to acquire Business Analyst services to help gather business requirements, develop use cases, screen designs, data conversion plan, business process flow, testing, training, etc. Correct. TRA is looking for experienced business analysts proficient in these areas, as well as proficiency in data design and the mapping of screen elements to schema elements.
Will the awarded vendor be utilized for providing programming services to help develop the system OR will this be handled separately by TRA Staff Programming for this project will be done by TRA staff.
Will TRA provide a conference call telephone number for the meeting on June 21st? We have folks from our team that are located outside of St. Paul and would like to attend via teleconference call. No.
All Vendor Questions (contd.) What is the billing rate cap for each position? TRA has established a budget for the project, but has not capped the rate by position.
Is TRA looking to partner with an IT Services firm that specializes in providing a process and methodology for how to elicit business requirements, conduct JAD sessions, develop detailed use cases and know how to help clients develop the right set of “blue prints” that will be used for the development of a system? TRA is not looking for process and methodology expertise, but looking for a vendor that can provide business analysts that can carry out business requirements gathering, delivery of use cases or BPMN diagrams, design screens, system testing, and training of our internal business analyst team.
Who will be responsible for developing the new system (i.e., separate RFP)? Programming for this project will be done by TRA staff.
All Vendor Questions (contd.) Will a vendor’s project approach, methodology and work plan be used in your evaluation criteria OR will the evaluation criteria be solely based on the quality of resumes submitted? Deliverables and work plan are part of the proposal evaluation. The factors and weighting on which proposals will be judged are:
Criteria
Weightage
Expressed understanding of project objectives
15%
Deliverables and work plan
15%
Company experience with TRA or other pension systems
15%
Qualifications/experience of personnel working on the project
25%
Cost detail
30%
