Application Maintenance and Support

  1.  Definition: Application Maintenance and Support includes the skills and requirements for supporting application systems, including troubleshooting, modifying, maintaining and enhancing legacy systems. Application Maintenance and Support also applies to applications running in a production environment.
  2. Examples of included services: research, analysis, design, programming, testing, documenting and implementing maintenance changes; correcting software errors; modifying reports and ensuring accurate report runs; making modifications to the applications and documentation; writing ad hoc queries; loading and applying changes to the software language and/or database in which the application is written; providing corrections for production or any changes needed and participation in disaster recovery testing, planning and documentation. Services may need to be available 24/7 or on an on-call basis.

Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehouse

  1.  Definition: BI enables an organization to perform in-depth analysis and includes, where required, data mining of detailed business data providing real and significant information to business users. BI may include an integrated group of operational and decision support applications and databases. BI makes use of tools designed to easily access data warehouse data. A data warehouse collects, organizes and makes data available for the purpose of analysis and gives organizations the ability to access and analyze information about its business. The function of the data warehouse is to consolidate and reconcile information from across disparate business units and IT systems and provide a context for reporting and analysis.
  2. Examples of included services: architectural design, extraction, transformation and loading of data sources; planning, assessment, product installation and tuning; prototype development, deployment, data cleansing, data mart development and support; data migration, integration with data mining; integration with business intelligence tools and/or systems; data scrubbing; data transformation; training and knowledge transfer.

Project Management

  1. Definition: Project Management service providers may perform any or all of the project management processes identified by the Project Management Institute as published in the PMBOK® Guide, Fifth Edition or most recent.
  2. Examples of included services: utilizing the Customer’s tools and processes, using off-the-shelf tools, using Vendor’s own proprietary tools and processes to manage a project and using the Texas Project Delivery Framework.

Technology Upgrade/Migration and Transformation

  1. Definition: Technology Upgrade/Migration may be required to increase business functionality, reengineer a business function, keep current with vendor upgrades or when upgrading existing technology. Technology Transformation may be accomplished by converting/migrating legacy applications to new technology either with or without new business functionality or it may include introducing new technology into the enterprise. Technology Upgrade/Migration may also include providing website content accessibility compliance.
  2. Examples of included services: assessments of the current application portfolio, evaluation of the technology assets before beginning technology transformation and Business Case development for justification of an initiative. Also included are: technology transformations, which may include, appropriate Return on Investment (ROI), benchmarks and milestones. The following activities may also be included: planning, analysis, requirements development, proof of concept, deployment, implementation, integration, remediation, data migration, documentation, application programming and support services; and training support.

Information Technology Assessments and Planning

  1. Definition: IT Assessments and Planning may include IT effectiveness, maturity, governance, project management and architecture. Strategic planning activities may include mission statement development, visioning and goals, objectives, and strategy development. Tactical planning may require that actionable plans and roadmaps be provided.
  2. Examples of included services: IT assessments, including enterprise architecture and cloud assessments; staff knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) assessments; bandwidth assessments, network performance and strategic and tactical planning.

Application Development

  1. Definition: Application Development is the development of new applications which may be mainframe, server, network-based, web-based or a combination. The requirements for new applications may require interfaces to existing applications.
  2. Examples of included services: web application development; mobile application development; service oriented architecture (SOA); researching; analyzing; gathering requirements; designing; programming; testing; documenting and implementing; applying changes to the software language and/or database in which the application is written; providing corrections for production or any changes needed and participation in disaster recovery planning and documentation.

Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V)

  1. Definition: Verification and Validation are independent procedures that are used together for in-depth analysis by checking that a product, service, or system meets requirements, independent oversight of SDLC processes and specifications and that it fulfills its intended purpose.
  2. Examples of included services: Validation of software design to meet system needs/requirements; traceability of safety critical requirements; design analysis of selected critical algorithms; and code analysis of mission-critical software components and the independent oversight and assessment of systems development life cycle (SDLC) processes (such as issue and risk management, requirements analysis, testing, data conversion etc.)

Sample SOW