Agile Project Management, Assurance and Auditing: A Practical Guide for Auditors, Reviewers and Project Teams

Agile Project Management, Assurance and Auditing – A practical guide for auditors, reviewers and project teams

Project managers are under increasing pressure to deliver more with less time and fewer resources. The pace of change is relentless, with technological opportunities far beyond what we imagined a decade ago.

Adopting the Agile methodology helps organisations develop the flexibility and adaptability necessary in such fast-paced environments.

Agile takes a completely different approach to other project management methodologies that an organisation may be used to and changes the project audit and review processes. The use of Agile for non-IT projects – such as introducing new products, refurbishing retail outlets and even planning and running audits – means that general auditors and other reviewers, as well as IT specialist auditors, need to understand Agile practices.

This guide provides an overview of Agile for auditors, reviewers and project teams

This guide covers:

• What are the Agile project management audit objectives?
• What risks are covered by each objective?
• What controls can we expect and how can these be audited?
• Case studies illustrating Agile project initiation and high-level requirements.
• Hints and tips for performing an audit review.

For experienced auditors and project management teams, this guide demonstrates how they can adapt and reuse audit skills that they may have gained during traditional waterfall, CRAMM (CCTA Risk Analysis and Management Method), or PRINCE2® implementation/audits. For those less experienced, it will encourage them to consider these good practices and their application to Agile audits.

An ideal introduction to Agile project management for auditors, project managers, Agile teams and students

About the Author

A qualified accountant, Certified Information Systems Auditor®, and Certified ScrumMaster, Chris has more than 30 years’ experience providing financial and IT advisory and risk management services. He worked for 16 years at a Big 4 accounting firm, where he managed a number of major information security audit and risk assignments, including many project risk and business control reviews. He was head of information risk training in the UK and ran training courses overseas, including in India and Iceland. He has worked in a wide range of industry sectors, including oil and gas, the public sector and aviation and travel.

For the past 14 years, Chris has been an independent consultant specialising in financial, SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley), and operational controls for major enterprise resource planning implementations at oil and gas enterprises. He has seen a significant change from traditional to Agile project management. He has developed techniques and tools to provide effective controls and governance frameworks within these revised approaches.

Chris is now semi-retired but is still active as an author, book reviewer, trainer, and international speaker.