No to the SR & ED documentation software

In more than 25 years in the business I have never seen a SR & ED documentation software  that bore it’s name. Several competitors have proposed or are still offering software to document the activities and especially the costs of SR & ED. This is, of course, an attractive concept as it could meet the requirements of the CRA’s Research and Technology Advisors (RTAs). But that does not work. It will never work and here is why.

Selling dreams – or fake security

Of course, the software designers worked very hard to develop it. They inserted a lot of good ideas in there. They deserve our support. Oh yeah ? I have NEVER seen such software still fully operational after more than a single year at a client. Never. And to those who answer me that their implantation is older than that I answer, Oh yeah? What functions are still using? The costs accumulation ? What is the driving force behind this implementation? The software itself or the effort that the consultant injects every month or quarter? Is this software installed for ALL your teams of developers? You reduced the year-end writing effort by how much? 10%?

Garbage in – garbage out

The SR & ED documentation software vendors all have pretty much the same arguments:

• It’s automatic
• It reduces writing efforts at the end of the year
• It forces discipline
• It will be more acceptable to CRTs

These are good selling points, but the reality is quite different:

• Garbage in – garbage out: after a few weeks of use without the presence of the consultant who sold the software, we find:
  • a tendency to limit documentation efforts.
  • more and more copy-and-paste from one week to the next.
  • little or no update of the experimental project structure.
  • multiplication of dangerous words (trial and error, debugging, client documentation, etc.) or meaningless catchy phrases to document the research.
• Too much is like not enough. I still remember a customer who came to an audit meeting with at least 60 cm of paper printed from his software. It was full of repetitions, meaningless sentences … and the CRT refused to even take a look! Useless!

What is essential is the tight follow-up to get the quality information, not the price of the software.

• Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up.

  Despite all the goodwill of the management, the consultant and even the main users, the human nature quickly takes over if there is not a very close monitoring by the consultant. The monitoring must cover not only the existence of new documentation, but also, and above all, the relevance of the preserved traces. Without tight follow-up, the validity declines after a few weeks, three or four months at most. And we will not realize this until the end of the year, when trying to write the description.

• Some believe they are buying the solution to their problem.

  Software, however extraordinary, is NEVER the solution. It is only a tool. The solution is to closely monitor the data entered each week. Otherwise you accumulate waste and you throw away valuable time of your developers.

• Flexibility when faced with the unknown

The problem with documentation software is that these tools require pre-defining technological objectives, advancements (AT) and uncertainties (IT). How do you pre-define these if it is really an experimental development project? We can not know in advance where we will encounter problems, how many and what assumptions will be tested and demonstrated, what new avenues we will explore. The flexibility of the software is therefore an important issue. It is easy to create an initial template that structures an advancement, which relates to 1 to n uncertainties and for each uncertainty there are 1 to m assumptions, etc. But an experimental project does not always move linearly in a tree structure. The structure of these programs is often too cumbersome or complex to simply add new avenues explored. Even when a software expert creates new branches in the experimental process users will not do it, they will write anything, anywhere and the information collected will soon become unusable.

Buying software to document SR & ED solves no problem

A simple solution that works

Instead of buying useless technology, buy a good lab book, a project book, call it what you want. A simple notebook allows all insertions, references and notes that you want and it does not cost $ 10. When coupled with a “R&D folder”, you can add a copy of the project plans and follow-up reports – with your manual notations …

You want technology anyway ? Word and Excel are not enough for you? Implement a Wiki. This category of information sharing tool can evolve easily.

For some clients, we have purchased letter-size agendas specifying that they must stay on the desk, that they can be used for their personal needs, but most importantly, to record for each day (with dates) what they are working on and how much many hours they have devoted to it. Often a sentence is enough to recall the whole context. And the R & D / Non R & D breakdown will be easy to duplicate in the timesheet. You can add the names and links to supporting documents or test results that have been produced. At the end of the year you pick up these diaries. You take them out with the Word or Excel documents when you want to write the descriptions or when preparing for an audit.

Of course, close monitoring is essential for quality information, but at least you will not have to justify the $ 5,000. for a useless, heavy software.

Let me be clear. I have been involved in technology for 40 years. I believe in technology. But I have never seen a technology that self documents SR & ED. A technology flexible enough to adapt to several contexts.

Conclusion: Praise for the simple project book

Consequently, the right approach is simplicity. Documenting without software gives you flexibility and quality. It’s a question of will, organization and follow-up, not computer code. From there, it becomes a matter of building the habit of documenting often.

Ask your consultant to follow your team, to structure your documentation. Apart from you, he is the one who is really very interested in maximizing your credits. The result, when written by the hand of your experts will be 100 times more convincing for the CRT, and he will see, as a bonus, diagrams (by hand), test results, etc. In short, he will see proof that you manage your SR & ED project as a systematic research project.

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