Introduction

R&D Capitalization is a method of generating a report that describes where you invest your developers' effort. It comprises 3 key components:

1. Measure for contributor activity

2. Categorizing that activity

3. Generate a capitalization rate

The rest of the doc will enumerate the process of each component on the path to generating a capitalization report" would help structure it.

There are two methods of measuring contributor activity

1. Velocity-based method

   1. Records completed work.

   2. Work is measured using one of two values:

      1. Issue count

      2. Story point estimates

   3. Credit is attributed to the assigned contributors.

2. Investment Hours Method

   1. Tracks the time spent as tickets are actively worked on.

   2. Monitors contributor activity in issue tracking tools or commit actions in code tools.

      1. e.g. Jira and Github

   3. Credits a developer's contributions even if they are not assigned to the issue.

Overview of the presentation of data

A simple, public example of an Investment Hours R&D Capitalization report

A simple, public example of an Velocity R&D Capitalization report

Data granularity

1. Each row represents a contributors activity on a given issue in a given month

2. In its simplest form a row contains the following data

Basic velocity example row

Basic investment hours example row

Describing parent container to facilitate roll up

1. Issues often belong to parent containers which may in term belong to another parent.

   1. e.g. Initiatives contain Epics which contain Issues

2. Including these parents allows for easier roll up of data

Velocity with parent issues

Investment hours with parent issues

Categorizes capitalizable work 

1. Users can indicate work is capitalizable at any level

   1. e.g. If an issue has a capitalizable custom field value of “Yes”

   2. e.g. If an issue is contained in an epic with a capitalizable custom field value of “Yes”

2. Users can use a complex capitalization trigger

   1. e.g. If an issue is contained in an epic with a capitalizable custom field value of “Yes” and that issue is not of the “Spike” type. 

Describing contributors to facilitate roll up

Contributor tags can be included in your report to allow you to group data by team, role or any other characteristic that is

Velocity with parent issues and contributor tagging

Investment hours with parent issues and contributor tagging

Measuring effort using velocity 

There are three methods of attributing velocity to assignees:

1. Full credit to current assignee

2. Full credit to all assignee

3. Split credit among all assignees

Calculating time using investment hours

User Interface (Development in Flight; Delivery February 2025)

1. Select the Method you want to use to generate your capitalization report.

2. Define the characteristics of capitalizable work.

3. Select the columns of information that you want included in the report.

4. Select the timeframe you want to report.

5. Review and Redownload past reports.