I accidentally posted this to the CMA forum, so posting this hear now.
Hello,I recently ran Finance and Accounting at an information services firm that began investing significantly in software engineers for product development. As we went through this process, I noticed a couple of things:1. The general integration of finance in the engineering equation is more limited than other functions.2. There are almost no systems or tools that help improve this process/relationship. I believe the rapid shift to agile development has complicated this relationship. But getting to a total cost of development and management across various product investments (regardless of capitalization) was never clean. Financial performance management, at least on the productivity side of the equation was limited.3. While software capitalization should theoretically be an important part of the process, it is often an afterthought and managed through rudimentary excel processes and linkages.My questions to the group (for those that have been involved in the finance and accounting efforts around software development) are as follows:1. What are the pain points you have experienced and what tools did you utilize to overcome those?2. Have you implemented finance oriented metrics into the process? Were you able to do so without significantly impacting the efficiency of the engineering team.3. What systems and processes did you utilize for software capitalization? I have pretty much only seen excel (which is what I managed with)4. If you have particular expertise or interest, please let me know if you would like to connect to discuss further.Many thanks,Brice------------------------------
Brice Chaney
Vice President
Wilton CT
United States
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