Danube - Capitalization of Sprint Activities - Comments

use PBIs and budgets not tasks

LaszloSzalvay — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:10:06 -0500

Hey Jim,
I have been thinking about this problem for quite some time, ever since I met with our own CPA firm to discuss it. The issue is around what qualifies as an R+D credit. Relying on Product Owners, Team Members or ScrumMasters to interpret FASB rulings that are geared towards phased-based software development models is really hairy. One of the rules, for example is 'technical feasibility' -- what does that mean in a Scrum environment? I think it means something very different than a waterfall based approach.

Here's a blog I wrote a few weeks ago on this topic where I encourage teams to use themes, web reports and PBIs in ScrumWorks and collect data at the PBI level because I thought it was similar in spirit to the Scrum framework.

Although this isn't something that has been approved by FASB, it demonstrates to me how many different layers of an enterprise Scrum hits.

just my 2 cents.
Laszlo

supported by ScrumWorks Pro

MichaelJames — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:48:14 -0500

As Jim mentions, ScrumWorks Pro supports this. Despite our concern that detailed time tracking would be abused (comparing estimates to actuals, etc.), we added the capability a couple years ago to help support organizations that needed it for tax purposes.

To turn this on, go to "File -> Product Properties" and enable "Timesheets."

--mj

Capitalization of Sprint Activities

jschiel — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:45:47 -0500

Capitalization of a software project is extremely important to organizations engaged primarily in application development these days. To put it simply, the US government allows a company to defer the taxes that would normally be paid on research and development activities until such time as the product is generally available and the company can begin selling the product and bringing in revenue.