Deadline Date: Wednesday 17 April 2024

Requirement: Operational Acceptance Analyst - ACO Operational Digital Workplace (ODW) Projects – Junior level

Location: Mons, BE

Full Time On-Site: Yes

Time On-Site: 100%

Total Scope of the request (hours): 1140

Required Start Date: 27 May 2024

End Contract Date: 31 December 2024 (with possibility to extend on annual basis until Dec 2028)

Required Security Clearance: NATO SECRET

Note: For all Level-of-Effort and Completion-Type requests processed outside of the IWC Value Stream, and for which the contractor will not be reimbursed directly by NCIA for travel expenses, additional travel funding shall be allocated on a Not-to-exceed basis when the yearly Option is exercised.

1. BACKGROUND

The ACO (Allied Command Operations) J6 Cyberspace Division has assigned the role of Senior Requirements Owner (SRO) for all CIS Capabilities, Projects and services that are delivered to ACO, in support of SACEUR missions. Key roles of the SRO, in relation with this job, are:

Monitor the Software projects and services implementation milestones and report to the management about the progress of ACO critical CIS projects

Monitor and report the operational risk related to CIS projects changes (scope, timeline, costs)

Manage the Operational Acceptance of the delivered projects, manage transition to service and the “in service” stage.

ACO established a Strategic Warfighting HQ to enable its role for delivering Multi-domain Operations. Operational Digital Workplace will play a crucial role for the SWHQ and will be enabled by the delivery of the right software projects and services supporting the operational users to conduct following functions:

Analyze and advise

Manage systems

Command and Control

Assess

Validate

Project / services that enable acceptance, requires confirmation of receipt of the completed project/service provision verifying the operational usability, suitability and sustainability (from an O&M affordability point of view) of the project based on agreed operational acceptance criteria.

ACO verification of acceptance criteria is conducted via User and Operational acceptance.

Projects milestones monitoring, operational risk management are intrinsically linked with Operational Acceptance and transition to service;

The scope of the projects for which ACOS J6Cy is assigned SRO covers the user facing services from the C3 taxonomy, dedicated to the ODW: Core communications services (Voice VTC), Core enterprise services (IKM, Office suites), CIS Security and Cyber defense (Situational Awareness), Service Management and Control and Software applications (Operational C2, INTEL, or Business Functional services - LOG, MED).

The ability of staff to perform the full scope of acceptance activities is constrained by the backgrounds and skills of available personnel. Therefore, the ACO J6Cy SM/SDMO) requires access to contractual support that provides Subject Matter Expertise in areas that include: risk management, project management (project monitoring and controlling; project closure), acceptance testing for Software projects, transition to service (business analysis and business change),

2. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

The work will be primarily undertaken at SHAPE HQ, Belgium, Cyber Directorate, J6 Cyberspace Division, Service Management Branch, Service Delivery Management Office. Some analysis and verification efforts may be undertaken in The Hague, Netherlands.

When Services are being deployed to sites other than SHAPE HQ, the contractor may be deployed to those sites to conduct reviews and site activities related to this SOW.

Additional travel funding will be provided to cover travel costs.

3. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

27th of May 2024 – 31 December 2024, with the possibility to extend annually, based on performance results.

4. CONTRACTOR SUPERVISION

The contractor shall report to and receive technical guidance for all technical content of the SOW, including the specific and daily tasking, management of deliverables and technical contractual oversight, from the sponsor. The sponsor is the Service Delivery Management Office Head, from ACO J6 Cyberspace Division, Service Management Branch,

The sponsor will notify the Contracting Officer or his/her designated representative of any need to amend, extend, or cancel this SOW/RFP for evolving requirements, new tasking, and/or technical non- performance.

The sponsor shall:

− Remain the main POC for all technical aspects of the SOW.

− Review (and approve) all contractor tasking and deliverables for completeness and accuracy.

− Have daily interaction with contractor personnel and assess the quality, quantity, and timeliness of their work.

The sponsor written approval of work reported and deliverables submitted is mandatory for contractor invoices to be successfully processed.

5. SCOPE OF WORK

This Statement of Work (SoW) identifies the acceptance assessment services to be provided by the contractor supporting Allied Command Operations (ACO) with the software projects and services monitoring and reporting, User Acceptance (UA) and Operational Acceptance (OA) of new or modified systems and projects, services delivered by the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA).

The goal of project monitoring, operational risk management and acceptance assessment is to ensure that the projects / services are delivered timely, meet the user and customer’s operational requirements, operational acceptance criteria, and that the transition to service is performed in a planned and managed manner.

CIS services are End-to-End (E2E) services consisting of systems delivered by NCIA projects and contractors, bundled with various NCIA service management and service operations processes that interact with operational processes.

6. TASKS, DUTIES

Software projects and services analysis, monitoring and reporting includes the support project management milestones tracking, operational requirements traceability, scope, time, cost change analysis and impact. This will be done for prioritized projects, ACO CIS critical projects and comprises following tasks:

a. Collect inputs from a variety of sources and prepare and coordinate deliverables.

b. Conduct analysis and communicate findings to project team and decision makers.

c. Interface with the NCIA PM and ACO SRO, Cy Service Operational Requirements managers.

d. Work within a multi-stakeholder, technical, and matrixed organizational environment.

e. Identify each critical dependency.

f. Identify the commitments to address each critical dependency and document the commitments made by those responsible for providing the work product (NCIA PM) and those receiving the work product (ACO SRO).

g. Prepare and maintain a Dependency Structure Matrix identifying project interdependency, interdependencies with other programmes, and critical commitments.

h. Track critical dependencies and commitments and recommend corrective actions, as appropriate.

i. Contribute to the establishment of a continuing capability to monitor and control the critical projects.

j. Monitor and create situational awareness for the projects

k. Contribute for quarterly progress reviews of each portfolio of projects and develop reports and dashboards.

Operational Risk management is a proactive event-based approach to continuously assess "what might go wrong" within the project and set activities into action to control, minimize or even eliminate the risk. Risks are typically defined with parameters such as the probability and likelihood of failing to achieve a particular operational outcome, the consequences and impacts of failing to achieve that outcome, and thresholds to determine if the status of a risk requires action. Main tasks for operational risk management are:

a. Pro-actively identify risks, assess impacts, and recommend responses to decrease the probability of negative events and increase the probability of positive outcomes.

b. Identify, characterize, and develop responses to systemic risks within Implementation processes of ACO critical projects.

c. Contribute to the development of a project risk management processes assessing

stakeholder risk perception and acceptance, and identifying the standards for risk

identification, risk assessment, risk reporting, and risk review.

d. Establish and maintain the Risk Register product, for ACO critical projects

e. Provide impact assessment of projects issues, risks, and changes.

f. Perform periodic project risk assessments.

g. Perform periodic project risk reviews.

User Acceptance and Operational Acceptance requires project monitoring and operational risk management support. The UA and OA assessment include the following tasks that will be conducted by the Project and acceptance analyst:

h. Support project acceptance for the SHAPE CIS projects as assigned.

i. Develop Operational acceptance criteria (OAC) based on a thorough analysis of Operational Requirements (functionality, performance and other characteristics) from a stakeholders or usage perspective.

j. Establish current baseline for current delivered services (in case of replacement)

k. Plan and conduct or witness Service based testing – utility – to confirm if service delivers the required functionality (for each type of service and each type of user)

l. Conduct Operational Test and Evaluation (OTE) in conjunction with ACO as required and agreed with them. This will assure the proper functioning of the E2E service.

m. Identify project milestones that can affect the OA activities

n. Identify and manage the risk associated to OACs in order to inform their prioritization

o. Assure that any remaining defects to the technical systems are fixed or have acceptable work-arounds or capture as deficiencies.

p. Identify and asses the residual risk associated with the deficiencies resulting after UA, OA or OLT

q. Assure that user is ready to use the new service with no or minimal risk (not affecting the mission).

r. Performs other tasks duties as may be required.

7. QUALIFICATIONS

[See Requirements]

8. DELIVERABLES

Acceptance analyst staff will generate the following deliverables when carrying out activities:

a. Dependency structure Matrix

b. Project review report

c. Project dashboard

d. Operational risk register

Provide support for:

a. User Acceptance and Operational Acceptance Reports

b. Test Reports (UA,OA,OLT, OTE)

c. Corrective Action, Acceptance deficiencies Reports

d. Requirements Traceability Matrix

e. UA and OA Dashboard for the assigned projects

9. NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT

Contractor’s personnel employed under the provisions of this contract shall be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement prior to commencement of works.

Requirements

7. QUALIFICATIONS

Essential:

Desirable: