Project Auditing Activities Across the PMO Continuum

The "project auditing" function along the PMO competency continuum provides for progressive levels of internal and external examination of project and business performance. It represents project review activities that are conducted for the purposes of oversight and control at specified points in the project management life cycle. It also represents reviews that are conducted in response to project management, technical, or business indicators that trigger the need to examine all or a portion of project performance in greater detail.

Table 15.1 presents an overview of the range of prescribed PMO project auditing activities according to each level in the PMO competency continuum.

Table 15.1: Range of Project Auditing Activities across the PMO Continuum

Project Office	Basic PMO	Standard PMO	Advanced PMO	Center of Excellence
Conducts project audits and reviews as prescribed by the project manager	Prescribes and conducts simple project reviews Establishes basic project health checks Monitors project technical reviews	Establishes project auditing capability across projects Implements preproject reviews Conducts project phase reviews Conducts other essential project, business, and technical audits Implements postproject reviews	Expands auditing efficiency through training Provides auditor and team training Provides project manager self-audit training Provides auditing familiarization training to project stakeholders	Conducts project audit analyses to improve auditing effectiveness Evaluates current audit capability Examines use of external auditors Recommends project audits

The project office will normally focus on reviews initiated and conducted by the project manager or project team, who use any guidance provided by a higher level PMO or by business units within the relevant organization. These reviews are intended to validate reported project status and to identify any unreported indicators that threaten successful continuation of the project effort.

Mid-range PMO levels will develop and implement project auditing processes that can be used to provide reasonable assurance of project success throughout the project management life cycle. This involves (a) the specification of audit points for standard project audits and (b) the identification of criteria for triggering project audits within the project management environment. The mid-range PMO will examine and identify the fundamental audit and review needs of the relevant organization and then implement auditing processes and procedures in response to those needs. Conducting project audits and reviews is an inherent feature of project management, and the advanced level PMO may consider establishing a training program that addresses concepts and practices in project auditing for selected project stakeholders.

The center of excellence will focus on ensuring that the auditing capability established within the project management environment is efficient and effectively serves the interests of project and business managers alike. It contributes business perspectives to decisions about which audits and reviews are needed and which are not while also recommending the addition of certain types of audits and the removal of others. The center of excellence is also adequately positioned to identify and evaluate external auditors who can assist the PMO in deliberating its project audit and review needs, in developing auditing processes and procedures, and in conducting relevant project audits and reviews as third-party participants.

The project auditing activity is another area that interfaces with process guidance prescribed in the PMO "methodology management" function (see Chapter 1). In particular, audit and review activities prescribed for the project manager or project team, and the procedures for accomplishing them, should be incorporated into the project management methodology. As well, other audits to which the project, project manager, or project team members are susceptible should be identified.

Project auditing also has alignment with the PMO "standards and metrics" function (see Chapter 3), as audits are generally constructed and conducted to validate compliance with standards that are (a) identified in association with project management activities and (b) imposed by business needs, interests, and objectives. There is likely to be some general link to several other PMO functions to the extent that project audits and reviews are applied to measure their application and performance results.