Annual Audit Manual
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2012 Performing project management activities
Oct-2012
In This Section
Overview
This topic explains:
- Separating the project tasks from the audit decisions
- Who will perform the project management tasks?
OAG Guidance
Audit management includes activities to achieve an effective CAS-compliant audit and project management to achieve efficiency goals. Balancing these priorities can be a challenge, especially on larger and more complex engagements or where the team manager is less experienced or does not have project management support. This guidance seeks to help distinguish the two, with the goal of releasing administrative time and effort for the team manager to focus on audit quality.
On larger or more complex engagements, consider how the engagement leader, who has overall responsibility for the effectiveness and efficiency of the audit, may delegate the project management role so as to have more time to focus on audit quality and delivering the audit.
OAG Guidance
The planning stage is used to identify the best team for the audit, including who will perform the project management tasks. At the team planning meeting(s), the team may consider how to allocate the project management tasks traditionally performed on the engagement by the engagement leader and team manager. The team will check that the project management tasks and the required coaching tasks are carefully allocated, with more than one person contributing.
The appropriate person or people will depend on the size and specific circumstances of the engagement and it will, in essence, depend on:
- how the project management tasks have been defined for the engagement;
- whether project management tasks will be assigned to one individual or whether the tasks will be spread across several individuals;
- the amount of influence required by the individual to deal with the complexities of the engagement or the personalities involved (e.g. client, regional OAG offices); and
- the budget available for these important tasks.
As a guide, it is envisaged that some of these tasks are sufficiently important and challenging that it is likely to require the skills of an experienced team member on more modest, routine engagements; while the engagement manager would likely be required to complete some tasks on a complex audit. Experience also shows that less experienced staff, with appropriate briefing, coaching and review, can contribute to project management activities.