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+#+title: Agile Auditing: An Introduction
+#+date: <2023-08-18>
+#+description: A quick introduction to using the Agile methodology in an audit.
+#+filetags: :audit:
+
+* What is Agile Auditing?
+[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development][Agile]], the collaborative philosophy behind many software development methods,
+has been picking up steam as a beneficial tool to use in the external and
+internal auditing world.
+
+This blog post will walk through commonly used terms within Agile, Scrum, and
+Kanban in order to translate these terms and roles into audit-specific terms.
+
+Whether your team is in charge of a financial statement audit, an attestation
+(SOC 1, SOC 2, etc.), or a unique internal audit, the terms used throughout this
+post should still apply.
+
+* Agile
+To start, I'll take a look at Agile.
+
+#+begin_quote
+The Agile methodology is a project management approach that involves breaking
+the project into phases and emphasizes continuous collaboration and improvement.
+Teams follow a cycle of planning, executing, and evaluating.
+#+end_quote
+
+While this approach may seem familiar to what audit teams have historically
+done, an audit team must make distinct changes in their mentality and how they
+approach and manage a project.
+
+** Agile Values
+The Agile Manifesto, written in 2001 at a summit in Utah, contain a set of four
+main values that comprise the Agile approach:
+
+1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
+2. Working software over comprehensive documentation.
+3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
+4. Responding to change over following a plan.
+
+Beyond the four values, [[https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html][twelve principles]] were also written as part of the
+summit.
+
+In order to relate these values to an audit or attestation engagement, we need
+to shift the focus from software development to the main goal of an engagement:
+completing sufficient audit testing to address to relevant risks over the
+processes and controls at hand.
+
+Audit Examples:
+
+- Engagement teams must value the team members, client contacts, and their
+  interactions over the historical processes and tools that have been used.
+- Engagement teams must value a final report that contains sufficient audit
+  documentation over excessive documentation or scope creep.
+- Engagement teams must collaborate with the audit clients as much as feasible
+  to ensure that both sides are constantly updated with current knowledge of the
+  engagement's status and any potential findings, rather than waiting for
+  pre-set meetings or the end of the engagement to communicate.
+- Engagement teams must be able to respond to change in an engagement's
+  schedule, scope, or environment to ensure that the project is completed in a
+  timely manner and that all relevant areas are tested.
+  - In terms of an audit department's portfolio, they must be able to respond to
+    changes in their company's or client's environment and be able to
+    dynamically change their audit plan accordingly.
+
+* Scrum
+The above section discusses the high-level details of the Agile philosophy and
+how an audit team can potentially mold that mindset into the audit world, but
+how does a team implement these ideas?
+
+There are many methods that use an Agile mindset, but I prefer [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)][Scrum]]. Scrum is a
+framework based on Agile that enables a team to work through a project through a
+series of roles, ceremonies, artifacts, and values.
+
+Let's dive into each of these individually.
+
+** Scrum Team
+A scrum project is only as good as the team running the project. Standard scrum
+teams are separated into three distinct areas:
+
+1. *Product Owner (Client Contact)*: The client contact is the audit equivalent
+   of the product owner in Scrum. They are responsible for partnering with the
+   engagement or audit team to ensure progress is being made, priorities are
+   established, and clear guidance is given when questions or findings arise
+   within each sprint.
+2. *Scrum Master (Engagement Lead)*: The engagement or audit team lead is
+   responsible for coaching the team and the client contact on the scrum
+   process, tracking team progress against plan, scheduling necessary resources,
+   and helping remove obstacles.
+3. *Scrum Developers (Engagement Members)*: The engagement or audit team is the
+   set of team members responsible for getting the work done. These team members
+   will work on each task, report progress, resolve obstacles, and collaborate
+   with other team members and the client contact to ensure goals are being met.
+
+** Scrum Ceremonies
+Scrum ceremonies are events that are performed on a regular basis.
+
+1. *Sprint Planning*: The team works together to plan the upcoming sprint goal
+   and which user stories (tasks) will be added to the sprint to achieve that
+   goal.
+2. *Sprint*: The time period, typically at least one week and no more than one
+   month in length, where the team works on the stories and anything in the
+   backlog.
+3. *Daily Scrum*: A very short meeting held each day, typically 15 minutes, to
+   quickly emphasize alignment on the sprint goal and plan the next 24 hours.
+   Each team member may share what they did the day before, what they'll do
+   today, and any obstacles to their work.
+4. *Sprint Review*: At the end of each sprint, the team will gather and discuss
+   the progress, obstacles, and backlog from the previous sprint.
+5. *Sprint Retrospective*: More specific than the sprint review, the
+   retrospective is meant to discuss what worked and what did not work during
+   the sprint. This may be processes, tools, people, or even things related to
+   the Scrum ceremonies.
+
+One additional ceremony that may be applicable is organizing the backlog. This
+is typically the responsibility of the engagement leader and is meant to
+prioritize and clarify what needs to be done to complete items in the backlog.
+
+** Artifacts
+While artifacts are generally not customizable in the audit world (i.e., each
+control test must include some kind of working paper with evidence supporting
+the test results), I wanted to include some quick notes on associating scrum
+artifact terms with an audit.
+
+1. *Product Backlog*: This is the overall backlog of unfinished audit tasks from
+   all prior sprints.
+2. *Sprint Backlog*: This is the backlog of unfinished audit tasks from one
+   individual sprint.
+3. *Increment*: This is the output of each sprint - generally this is best
+   thought of as any documentation prepared during the sprint, such as risk
+   assessments, control working papers, deficiency analysis, etc.
+
+* Kanban
+Last but not least, Kanban is a methodology that relies on boards to categorize
+work into distinct, descriptive categories that allow an agile or scrum team to
+effectively plan the work of a sprint or project.
+
+See Atlassian's [[https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban][Kanban]] page for more information.