Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition

Transcription

1 Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition Hotcourses... 2 Agile Web Development Services... 3 Research and strategy... 3 Graphic Design and User Experience... 3 Solution Design... 3 Development... 3 Testing... 4 Search Engine Optimisation... 4 Cloud hosting and management... 4 Project management... 4 Track record... 4 British Council 5 Learning Records Service 5 Skills Funding Agency 5 Information assurance... 6 Backup/Restore and Disaster Recovery... 6 On-boarding and Off-boarding... 6 Service migration... 6 Service management details... 6 Project Management... 6 Helpdesk... 7 Data management... 7 Training... 7 Technical requirements... 7 Service constraints... 7 Service Levels... 7 Pricing... 8 Financial recompense model for not meeting service levels... 8 Ordering and invoicing... 8 Termination terms... 8 Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 1

2 Consumer responsibilities... 9 Trial services... 9 Open standards... 9 Open source software... 9 Information Principles for the UK Public Sector... 9 Government ICT Strategy and Greening Government ICT Strategy... 9 Skills for the Information Age (SFIA) Definitions & Rate Card... 1 Rate card... 1 Consultancy day rate details... 1 Definitions... 2 Hotcourses Hotcourses was established in 1996 and is the world s leading provider of education websites and education data. Everything we do is within education. Our Solutions division provides consultancy, development, hosting, and service management for a number of public-sector clients that have included the Skills Funding Agency, the British Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. In addition, we run and develop a suite of websites under the Hotcourses banner. Hotcourses is based in the UK, with additional development and testing support in Chennai, India. The departmental breakdown is displayed below: Department Headcount IT and Development 80 Data processing 65 Customer Care, Production & Editorial 27 Account and Project Management 30 Management 6 Finance and Admin 14 Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 2

3 Agile Web Development Services Hotcourses offer full-service delivery of web development services, including: Research and strategy With over fifteen years of experience in the education sector, Hotcourses brings a unique perspective within the world of IT consultancy. The experienced team can offer strategic advice on how to develop web services which effectively meet the needs of the sector bodies, providers and learners themselves. The business analysis team will ensure that these needs are translated into effective IT solutions. Graphic Design and User Experience Hotcourses in-house design and user experiences teams create visually stunning and highly intuitive desktop and mobile browser interfaces. Our designers will work within organisational guidelines to create designs which seamlessly align with your wider brand. Through user testing workshops, the user experience team will design an easy-to-use user interface, ensuring high levels of usability and accessibility. Solution Design All software solutions are led by a technical architect who is responsible for the design of the system and ensuring that agreed standards are met. Their role is to take the requirements and produce a technical design which adheres to industry best-practices and is capable of meeting your requirements, including planning for future expansion of functionality and levels of usage. Where appropriate, these designs will feature cloud-based elements to take advantage of the benefits they offer. Development Working to an agile methodology and procedures outlined in our ISO 9001 and ISO accreditations, the highly experienced team are responsible for building a robust and performant web and mobile-web applications. The teams utilise a variety of development tools and approaches in order to efficiently deliver complete solutions, including: Oracle PL/SQL Oracle application server Java (Spring and Struts frameworks) Objective-C HTML5 CSS3 Javascript (including jquery framework) XML and XSLT JSON SOAP webservices As well as building browser-based applications, the team also have experience in the development of native ios and Android application development. All source code is subject to regular internal review within the development teams to ensure that best practice and coding standards are maintained. Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 3

4 Testing Testing is integrated throughout the project lifecycle, including unit testing, system testing, regression testing, performance testing, and user acceptance testing. Hotcourses dedicated testing team will take the functional requirements and build real-life test cases in order to ensure that the developed application is fully functional. They will also support you with user testing to ensure that real-life users are getting the most from the application. Automated test tools are used for regression and performance testing. Search Engine Optimisation Hotcourses will build a search engine optimisation strategy to ensure that your website is positioned as high as possible the most commonly used search engines. Our team has extensive experience of working in this competitive environment, and will work our development teams to ensure that all the necessary technical elements are in place, and work with you to create an action plan which includes content and social media strategy both vital elements in successfully search engine optimisation. Cloud hosting and management The Hotcourses Infrastructure and DBA Team are responsible for the design, build, monitoring and maintenance of all cloud-based hosting for Hotcourses projects. They are responsible for designing and implementing a technical infrastructure most appropriate to the requirements of the system and its users. Each system will have an agreed performance and availability SLA, against which the service will be monitored. Live issues are triaged based on an established impact assessment and resolved accordingly. In line with our ISO accreditation, the infrastructure team carry out security risk assessments as an integral part of the planning and design process. In addition, pre-launch independent penetration tests are carried out to objectively verify security features. Project management The entire lifecycle of the project will be managed by a dedicated Project Manager. Hotcourses have a project management team with a wealth of experience within all levels of the education sector. We combine a traditional PRINCE2 project management approach with an agile development methodology to ensure that our solutions both meet the needs of the end users and are delivered on time and to budget. All the project management processes are supported by the ISO 9001 accreditation which helps ensure that the full project lifecycle is fully transparent and documented. Track record Hotcourses have a proven track record in the successful delivery of IT and data solutions to public sector clients. Recent projects include: Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 4

5 British Council Launched in 2001 by the Prime Minister's initiative, the Education UK brand of publications and websites was the UK's most vital means of marketing education overseas. In 2013, Hotcourses was commissioned to redevelop the Education UK website, which includes: Multilingual website, available in sixteen languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic), and thirty-two individual local country sites. Integrated content management system to allow providers and British Council Country Offices to manage their own content. Education course search with over 90,000 further and higher education courses. Highly available, virtualised hosting infrastructure with 24/7 support. Learning Records Service The UK Register of Learning Providers is a ground-breaking project that aims to verify each UK learning provider against a trusted source, apply a unique provider number (UK Provider Reference Number), and enable the sharing of information about each provider throughout the education sector. Its business aim is to cut down bureaucracy, improve accuracy of information and create a single source of all verified UK providers. The solution includes: Public-facing web front-end for users to search for UK-based learning providers. Web-based CRM for providers and the UKRLP support team to maintain and modify provider profiles. SOAP web services which enable stakeholders to query and modify the data. Helpdesk to support providers and validate each provider against one of the approved data sources (Companies House, Government Statutes, etc). Skills Funding Agency Hotcourses provided the infrastructure, content management system, and data quality support required to collect and maintain the data for the National Careers Services Course Search. Hotcourses developed the Course Directory Provider Portal to enable education providers to manage the details of their own provision. The solution includes: Web-based content management system which allows providers to maintain their own provider and course data. SOAP web service for data publishing and integration with third-party websites. Helpdesk support, including quality initiative where Information Officers work with providers to improve the quality of their own data. Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 5

6 Information assurance Hotcourses Solutions are accredited to the Information Security Management Standard ISO 27001, providing clients with reassurance of the robust management and technical processes which ensure best practices in security are adhered to. In addition, Hotcourses have ISO 9001 Quality Management accreditation ensuring that all stages of a project lifecycle are logged and recorded to provide maximum transparency to the project team. As a consultancy, accreditation to specific Impact Levels is out of scope of this service. However, Hotcourses have developed and managed solutions up to IL2. Backup/Restore and Disaster Recovery Backup and disaster recovery plans are developed in accordance to the requirements of the proposed solution and our ISO accreditation. Typical features include: Regular database and file-system backups shipped to secure on-site and off-site locations. Regular tests of backup systems to ensure that the software and data can be restored successfully. Full disaster recovery plan to ensure that in the event of an infrastructure failure, downtime and data loss is minimised. On-boarding and Off-boarding Hotcourses can support the on boarding and off boarding of clients as part of any proposed solution. Service migration Hotcourses have extensive experience in data processing and migration. Migrating and transforming content and data to and from third-party solutions can be included in any proposed work. Service management details Project Management Hotcourses offer full project management with all solutions. Working to an agile methodology, our project team, with experience in the education sector, will work to deliver an appropriate and effective solution on-time and to-budget. Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 6

7 Helpdesk Helpdesk support can be included as part of a managed solution. The scope of the support can range from straightforward technical assistance for CRM and CMS users, through to specialist data support delivered by staff experienced in the UK education sector. Data management Hotcourses data team can assist in the collection and processing of any solution which includes a significant data portion. Training Training can be provided on all solutions, as per the requirement of the particular solution. Technical requirements There are no technical requirements for commissioning Hotcourses consultancy services. Technical requirements for users of systems developed by Hotcourses will vary according to the business requirements of the system and the functional specification. Service constraints Hotcourses are focussed on IT and data solutions in the education sector, where we can combine our sector experience with traditional development skills. Therefore, we are primarily looking for clients working in education. Service Levels Standard working hours are 9am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays). Availability and performance levels will be agreed in an SLA, according to the requirements of the solution. Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 7

8 Service issues raised are triaged according to the following severity and priority definitions: Severity definitions Critical A critical error prevents completion of a valid user function e.g. component crashes, impossible to access specified screen, failure to process messages received in correct order. This includes errors that prevent testing from continuing or an error that would be considered critical in a live (production) environment. Major A major error causes a significant problem with a user function or the software but doesn t prevent the software from being used. The error should be fixed before release as it would cause difficulties for users in a live (production) environment Minor A minor error causes a problem with a user function or the software. It causes inconvenience when the software is being used. Although users would notice it in a live (production) environment it wouldn t cause them many problems. Cosmetic System fully functional, but user experience impaired e.g. font size or type, spelling mistakes etc.note: Cosmetic issues will be reviewed in light of the Priority assigned to them. Priority definitions P1 Resolve error urgently. P2 Resolve error prior to release. P3 Resolve when practicable. Pricing Please see the pricing document for details of consultancy day rates and volume discounts. Financial recompense model for not meeting service levels A system of service credits will be applied in the event of failure to meet service levels. Service credit levels and threshold triggers will be agreed on a per-contract basis within the purchase order. Ordering and invoicing Ordering should be handled through the G-Cloud Call-off contract and additional purchase order. Payment can be either through invoice or BACS. Termination terms Please see details in the Terms and Conditions for details of termination of the service. Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 8

9 Consumer responsibilities Please see details in the Terms and Conditions for details of consumer responsibilities. Trial services There is no trial option for our consultancy services. However, please contact us for a fee-free discussion of your requirements. Open standards Wherever possible, solutions are designed and developed using open standards such as W3C standards for HTML and CSS. Particular focus is given to the use of open data standards where systems present an external interface to third-party systems. Open source software Wherever possible, solutions are designed and developed using open source software. Information Principles for the UK Public Sector Data is central to many systems developed by Hotcourses. The Information Principles for the UK Public Sector are central to decisions regarding: Data modelling and standardisation Data processing and management Data quality and validity Data publishing, sharing, and licencing Government ICT Strategy and Greening Government ICT Strategy Hotcourses actively seek to reduce the environmental impact of the solutions we produce, including: Assessing environmental impact in the selection criteria for new data centres. Utilising virtualisation technology to reduce power consumption. Purchasing only the lowest power servers and equipment. Using remote communications and conferencing facilities wherever possible. Adopting carbon-reducing strategies in the office environment, such as recycling, energy conservation etc. Agile Web Development for the Education Sector Service Definition v2.0 Page 9