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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.