The Significance of Auditing in Project Management

The evaluation of a project is critical to its success. Therefore, project organizations consider this aspect of managing project an essential tool in accomplishing the objectives of the organization through project management. Project audit assesses the performance of the project with respect to its available resources. In other words, it provides a comprehensive feedback on project status. Such feedback enables senior management to make informed decision that will push the project in achieving its objectives. However, some of the primary benefits of project audit are as follows; helps improve the performance of the project, enhances customer and stakeholder satisfaction, saves costs, controls scope and avoid scope creep, provides early problem diagnostics, clarifies performance/cost/schedule relationships, identifies future opportunities for improvement, evaluates performance of the project team, informs client of project status/prospects and reconfirms feasibility of commitment to project. Project auditors are charged with the responsibility to audit the project; for which the project manager and team should be supportive in order to boost the process. The project manager and team are the insiders, they know the ins and outs of the project; so, they are in a better position to provide guidance for the audit team as they audit the project. The Monitoring and Evaluation Plan developed earlier in the project should be used in this exercise. The project manager and team have that document and it should be made available to the audit team in order to aid them throughout the audit process. That document will spell out the critical areas of the project that should be evaluated during the audit process. Areas of the project where the auditors lack the capacity to probe into, they can recommend for a technical audit to be conducted in such areas.