USPTO Business-Oriented Software Solutions (BOSS)


Steampunk is committed to supporting the USPTO IT transformation journey, including key objectives such as NWOW, Cloud Migration, Modernization, and Stabilization – with customer business value at the heart of all solutions, decisions, and actions. The Business Oriented Software Solutions (BOSS) contract is a multiple award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract to provide services and expertise, primarily in the form of Agile Teams, in support of development, enhancement, operations, and maintenance of USPTO products. Steampunk’s unique approach to Agile, DevSecOps, and Human-Centered Design is a catalyst for this transformation journey.

what we do best

Integrated into Delivery

We bring together Agile, DevSecOps, and Human-Centered Design techniques to provide the best of each, resulting in a delivery approach that brings speed, transparency, flexibility and technical excellence, all while keeping users and stakeholders at the core of our solutioning.

Design & Strategy

At the core of all we do, human-centered design keeps our clients’ needs in focus and enables us to do our best work, together.

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DevSecOps

Bringing together development, operations, and security professionals to bring capability to the mission and embrace cultural change for organizational transformation.

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Digital Platforms

Helping our clients use Software-as-a-Service platforms to transform the way they serve their customers and achieve their missions.

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Cybersecurity

Since the early days of our company’s history, cybersecurity has been, and will continue to be, a critical mission we serve in defense of our clients, our nation and her interests.

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Data Exploitation

Helping our clients capture, process, store, and exploit, the value of data, in support of strategic, and tactical decision making, and stronger mission achievement.

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Contact Information

For any questions regarding the use of BOSS, please contact:

Brandon Marrow
Customer Success Lead
[email protected]

Daniel Steinberg
Contracts Director
[email protected]

project

Scope Areas

Program management includes all of the activities that enable and support IT delivery, including the following and related tasks: communication, documentation and reporting, coordination, resource identification and alignment, stakeholder engagement, problem identification and resolution, and compliance with all federal standards, laws and regulations. Program management also encompasses the purchase of software and hardware to meet the government’s needs, including continuity of operations (COOP); all purchases will become the property of the USPTO. The outcome required is synergy and continuous improvement in IT delivery that results in higher quality, faster time to deployment, and increased customer satisfaction. 

System and software development provides small teams (approximately 7-9 individuals) of dedicated staff with cross-functional skills. Individual team members will support, develop, automate, and manually test software products delivered and ensure value delivered each sprint or iteration. Team members will leverage Agile and DevSecOps methodologies and processes as well as technical software engineering skills. Teams will provide automated unit test code and associated data compatible with Continuous Integration Configuration Management (CICM) for delivery and check-in of code to the USPTO source code repository. Teams will participate collaboratively in code reviews and perform corrective actions for issues, and deliver software that complies with all USPTO and Federal laws and standards, (including Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act [29 U.S.C. § 794d] and related regulations). Delivered solutions will comply with all security regulations as required by NIST, including, potentially, all activities and documentation to obtain the authority to operate (ATO). The outcome will be software that agency customers need, on a consistent basis, with low defect rates.  

Architecture and design services will define, develop, deploy, support, and document solution architectures in alignment with the USPTO enterprise architecture. Delivered solutions include storage, database designs, interfaces, services, technologies, and frameworks. Services include compliance with all USPTO standards, and a keen focus on ‘cloud first’ solutions. Delivered solutions will follow all security regulations as required by NIST, including, potentially, all activities and documentation to obtain ATO. In addition, all deliverables will follow all Section 508 requirements, leverage micro services to enable automated deployment mechanisms, leverage best practices to provide ease of configuration updates, and support USPTO’s COOP plan. Solutions should deliver vendor agnostic solutions, portability, maintainability, reusability, upgradeability, interoperability, and long-term supportability. Services also include the development of remediation plans as needed to address any defects or system constraints that inhibit value delivery. The outcome should be common services available for both business and platform.  

Testing solutions includes functional, unit, integration, performance, security, regression, usability, and user acceptance testing support services. Testing scenarios are developed in a collaborative Agile team environment to enable the most robust test cases needed to ensure quality, security, usability and scalability of the delivered solution. Automation of test cases is required to reduce the number of test cases run manually, improve testing time, and increase test coverage. Automated testing supports and enables USPTO’s goal of moving teams to DevSecOps. Test cases are designed, defined, developed, updated and implemented by cross-skilled team members. The purpose of the test cases is to identify, document, track, mitigate, manage, and resolve all defects discovered during testing. That outcome informs continuous improvement processes to reduce the overall defect rate and improve software development, as well as product usability, stability, and value delivery.  

Configuration and release management services includes:  

  • Perform system configuration to enable the to-be business processes in one or more of the enterprise applications 
  • Perform periodic configuration audits and identify common configuration issues, share knowledge and best practices 
  • Provide system configuration, deployment, and release support for full lifecycle development and operations 
  • Check-in code, scripts, and configuration files into the USPTO Configuration Management (CM) Repository on a regular cadence 
  • Ensure that the USPTO can recreate builds for every release exclusively from code in the CM Repository 

The outcome is the ability to perform system builds from information in the configuration management system such that the product can be deployed or rolled back as needed.  

Operations includes providing continuous delivery of software with full lifecycle support to the products including activities, such as managing system baselines; monitoring system and application health; performing quality assurance; supporting end user training; performing data analysis, validation, and quality assurance; performing load balancing; delivering identity management support; serving as a subject matter expert for emergency support as needed; identifying, isolating, analyzing root causes, and resolving software problems to restore normal operations; keeping software current with applicable patches; modifying software in accordance with a product owner prioritized backlog; performing and/or support disaster recovery test events; and ensuring that USPTO defined service level agreements are met. The outcome is software that meets assigned uptime requirements, updates that avoid system downtime, and issue resolution in advance of user identification.  

Working collaboratively with the Product Owner and system user representatives, User Experience Design includes:  

  • Bring experience and expertise to design and enable the development of product solutions that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users across, teams, products, product lines, and organizations. As an integral member of Agile teams, services shall leverage visual design, programming, psychology and interaction to produce both conceptual and logical solutions that deliver business value, meet usability metrics and are technically feasible 
  • Research, design, develop, and conduct usability tests to evaluate the usability of the product and develop and implement remediation activities to improve the product 
  • Maintain the portfolio and product design libraries and style guides to provide a consistent look and feel across USPTO products 

The outcome is solutions delivered that are useful, accessible, desirable, credible, and valuable to the customer.  

Application Database Support includes:  

  • Working with the developers to create database objects and related data 
  • Creating synthetic and mock data needed for manual and automated testing 
  • Adhering to the product team’s database design standards 
  • Designing and applying database schema changes to lab and production environments that do not cause outages (backwards compatible changes supporting blue/green software deployment patterns) 
  • Modifying queries, hints, indexes, de-normalizing data, and/or other techniques to improve performance of data reads and writes 
  • Having an Agile mindset that allows the database schema to meet the needs of the product team 
  • As product teams adopt micro-service patterns, ensuring that database objects and queries do not overlap with other micro-services 
  • Committing schema updates and related documentation to source control and ensure it is versioned appropriately 

Working collaboratively with the Product Owner and Technical Lead, Scrum Master services include:  

  • Facilitating working agreements and norms for the product team 
  • Serving as a technical connection point between the other teams 
  • Protecting the cross-functional product team from outside interruptions, impediments, or blockers 
  • Ensuring the cross-functional product team keeps an agile mindset and adheres to the 12 principles from the Agile Manifesto 
  • Facilitating efficient product team meetings on a frequent cadence 
  • Facilitating product team self-reviews to improve product and process at regular intervals; conducting trainings on Scrum processes when needed 
  • Ensuring data is accurate and up-to-date in USPTO Agile lifecycle tracking tool(s). Tracking and reviewing metrics that enables the product team to improve software delivery and operations (SDO) activities

The contents of this site do not constitute or imply that the Federal Government sanctions, prefers, or considers the products and/or services provided by Steampunk to be superior to those of other vendors.

overview

Who is Steampunk

Steampunk is a change agent in the federal contracting space, bringing new thinking to clients in Homeland, Federal Civilian, and DoD Sectors. Through Human-Centered Delivery Methodology, we are fundamentally changing our federal clients’ expectations for true shared accountability in solving their toughest mission challenges.

Steampunk is not your average small business and USPTO is about to realize why. Over the past two years, we have reinvented a strong company that was formed to address challenges after 9/11. We have invested in new capabilities to solve customer challenges like BOSS and are bringing new thinking and techniques that are proven and can deliver exponentially greater value. Our service delivery is centered around our CMMI Level 3 appraised DI framework, which combines Agile, DevSecOps, and Human-Centered Design (HCD) into an integrated framework that puts our customers at the heart of everything we do. We have made significant investments in a state-of-the-art Design Studio with a virtual capability that provides superior USPTO product owner and user engagement that will exceed the objectives of the BOSS program. We have implemented our DI framework to drive transformational programs. Steampunk looks forward to sharing our experience leveraging proven methodologies used in large scale, highly complex, international, commerce-oriented environments to ensure business value is delivered without introducing operational risks.

details

Period of Performance

Through May 1, 2032.

Task Order Type

Task orders may be issued on a time and materials (T&M), labor hour (LH), or FFP basis, or any combination of the aforementioned task order types depending on the task order specific circumstances (e.g. level of risk, uncertainty of requirements). Additional task order types may be utilized if determined to be in the best interest of the USPTO by the task order Contracting Officer.

Maximum Contract Ceiling

The Government will issue task orders for the services specified in the contract, up to the maximum value of $2.0 billion.

Ordering Process

Task Order Small Business Set-Aside Considerations— At the task order level, the USPTO intends to automatically set-aside task order requirements with a total value estimated to be at or below $1 million. Task order requirements that are estimated to exceed the $1 million threshold will be competed openly amongst all awardees, small and large. In order to ensure adequate opportunities for small and large businesses under BOSS, the Government reserves the right to revise the $1 million task order set-aside threshold at any time during performance of the contract. Awardees certified as ‘small’ for contract award will be considered small for task order competitions until which time a size recertification is required (5 years post award, or as required by the Contracting Officer).

Task Order Solicitation Process

The typical BOSS ordering process is outlined below, but note that the ordering process is being modified to reduce PALT:

The requiring activity will submit a complete and compliant requisition package to the USPTO Office of Procurement, in accordance with established procedures.

The assigned CO will determine whether the effort will be set-aside or not (i.e. unrestricted or small business).

The assigned CO will issue a solicitation to the contractors deemed eligible to compete for the requirement. Contractors will prepare and submit responses based on the estimated dollar value and complexity of the proposed task order.

If necessary, during the evaluation of proposals, the Government may contact a Contractor with questions concerning its proposal. Upon completion of evaluations, the CO may issue a task order to the Contractor whose proposal is most advantageous to the Government.

After completion of the evaluation, exchanges/communications, if any, and best value analysis, the evaluation team will prepare a complete award recommendation package to document the selection process. The award recommendation package will be formulated in accordance with USPTO. The Government will issue task orders for the services specified in the contract, up to the maximum value of $2.0 billion.

Team Steampunk Partners

Steampunk has engaged a team of respected, industry-leading firms that bolster value to the USPTO through better, faster, cheaper delivery of business value.  These team members are:

  • Amivero (www.amivero.com) is a HUBZone, woman-owned, and 8(a) certified small business known for successfully applying a human-centered, data-driven approach to the delivery of innovative solutions that modernize the technology supporting national security and critical federal programs.
  • Blackwatch International Corporation (BWI) (www.blackwatchintel.com) is a small business based in McLean, VA, with offices in Sacramento, CA. BWI is a leading provider of cybersecurity, DevSecOps, information technology, engineering services, and has a Patented artificial intelligence approach (OneVision) applicable to virtually any mission critical situational awareness challenge from bomb detection to secure supply chain response to homeland security crisis situations.
  • Oasys International Corporation (Oasys) (www.oasysic.com) is a Service-Disabled-Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) that has gained a reputation for successful delivery of mission-focused IT solutions including, DevSecOps, Data Analytics, AI/ML, Cybersecurity, ICAM, Engineering and Testing, and Program and Platform Services, as well as Information Sharing, Organizational Change Management, and Training services.