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MNIT is seeking a vendor to assist our partner agency, the Minnesota Department of Revenue, with moving its operating model to an approach that is product-based and inclusive of Agile and DevOps principles. Vendor should describe in the work plan how they would accomplish the work as MNIT is seeking vendor guidance on how to best achieve this. MNIT Services helps support and maintain more than 100 system and technology applications for DOR. IT staff, numbering over 110 including state staff and contractors, are currently organized functionally to assist DOR with maintaining critical applications and infrastructure. A portfolio of around 30 IT projects is supported by MNIT to deliver needed business functionality to existing and new systems.

The following bullets represent task areas we envision:

Advisement

1. Provide guidance for starting a product-centric operating model transformation, navigating through the transformation process, accomplishing the implementation, and evaluating its success while addressing the cultural environment and leadership engagement needed for enterprise-wide digital transformation.
2. Educate MNIT and business executives and transformation team regarding the value of Agile, DevOps, and other necessary practices and processes to support a product-oriented operating model.
3. Partner with Organization Change Management resources to ensure successful transformation through engaged and informed leadership and a workforce prepared for change through careful attention to cultural indicators.
4. Identify potential pitfalls and risks to successful transformation and potential ways to mitigate them.
5. Identify constraints, including bureaucratic processes that challenge the successful transformation and engage with relevant leaders to overcome them while maintaining compliance.

Organizational Realignment

1. Advise agency leaders regarding engagement and alignment across the organization (MNIT and business).
2. Advise the team and decision makers in the context of the relevant bargaining agreements regarding organizational size and structure, new roles and their ideal placement among business or IT and fixed versus variable labor. Identify recommendation for individual, group and enterprise training to facilitate the successful adoption of new roles and processes.
3. Participate in the revision of project and portfolio reporting to align with Agile, DevOps, and product-oriented practices while still meeting all required reporting standards for state government and recipients of enhanced federal funding.

Model

1. Design an approach to determining product taxonomy that reflects the existing level of architectural maturity, complexity of existing policy and IT systems, as well as the current state of the partnership between MNIT and the business. The result will be establishment of a clear definition of 'What is a Product?' and a listing of the products within the organization as well as a mapping of technologies to products.
2. Define the needed architectural structure to support the transformation across the existing tools, software, and infrastructure components used to deliver software in the organization in a way that will allow the benefits of the transformation to be realized as efficiently as possible.
3. Participate in developing the roadmap to transformation, which may include piloting aspects of the changes and later scaling them across the organization, identifying skills gaps and strategies to close gaps, and identifying indicators of success and strategies to optimize.
4. Identify tools already in place that can be leveraged to support the transformation and ongoing operations in a product-centric operating model; those that are no longer needed; and gaps in the toolset.
5. Coach the team and decision makers to reimagine and effectively implement revisions to planning, prioritization, and governance across technology and business in a product model.
6. Coach the team on how to structure the funding models in support of a product-centric operating model.
7. Contribute to development and ongoing assessment of the transformation communication strategy as well as approaches to tracking and measuring success.

Requirements

1. Experience in a leadership role transforming from project to product operating model within an organization of at least 500 people.
2. Experience as a leader adopting AGILE and DevOps within a large organization.
3. Experience defining product taxonomy, and mapping technologies and people to products for a complex business.
4. Deep understanding and ability to explain to both business and technology leaders the strategic drivers and risks of each stage of the transformation and at high level decisions points throughout the transformation.
5. Ability to sustain transformation efforts through executive-level leadership transitions that are commonplace in executive government.
6. Experience developing, adopting and/or rolling out necessary forms and templates to capture and sufficiently flesh out input/requests/ideas into a product operating model.