Agile Auditing. Raven Catlin
minimal waste, while emphasizing risks and delivery of value to customers. In other words, we are providing an Agile audit framework for you to create your Agile audit methodology. Nonetheless, our experiences have shown us that auditors need something more methodical to start implementing Agile auditing and to increase the success rate with the Agile approach. Thus, we found providing special “recipes” to implement Agile have been of great assistance to auditors in their Agile journey. You will find these recipes at the end of various chapter, as appropriate.
We have made every effort to provide as much useful information as possible to help you find your success on your Agile auditing journey. Thank you for choosing this book. Please enjoy!
Acknowledgments
When we set out to write this book, we soon realized the immensity of the challenges and opportunities we were facing. No matter how vast our knowledge and experience and how many books we read, we could not operate alone: we needed our Agile team!
This book would not have been possible without the help of all our former bosses and audit teams who taught us about auditing. We are very grateful to our fellow audit professionals as a whole. Without them, we would not have had great examples of lessons learned and ideas on improving audit processes. We acknowledge that Agile auditing would not have been possible if it were not for the authors and practitioners who pioneered Agile frameworks in system development and other organizational initiatives. Additionally, the Agile auditing framework wouldn't be where it is if it were not for our Agile auditing clients, conference participants, and classroom students who challenged our thinking and confirmed our approach. The bosses, fellow auditors, authors, practitioners, clients, conference participants, and students are too numerous to list, but we thank them all.
We especially want to express our gratitude to the magnificent and supportive staff of our publisher, John Wiley & Sons. They know their business and do things right. Sheck Cho, Elisha Benjamin, and Susan Cerra, you made this book happen. You unknowingly helped us confirm that using the Agile framework, anything can be done. We thank our many colleagues, friends, and family members who have played a pivotal role in completing this book or learning key concepts, or both.
Raven is especially thankful for the following:
Ceciliana Watkins, friend and co‐author, for stepping in to help me write the book, editing the book, and sharing her unique expertise and perspective as a government auditor.
Carmen Catlin, sparkling daughter, for her beautiful smiles, warm hugs, encouraging words, and for being our delightful illustrator.
Jean Louk, Mom, for her endless love and support.
Christina Magargle, sister, for always knowing every one of my smallest thoughts and needs to finish the book even before I knew them.
Vicki McIntyre, friend, for being a voice of reason and encouragement and for her endless hours editing the book.
Ceciliana is especially thankful for the following:
Raven Catlin, friend and co‐author, for her sharing audit knowledge, believing in me, and providing opportunities to expand my creativity and brain.
Pheary Watkins, husband extraordinaire, for his never‐ending support and for making my dreams come true.
Helm Zinser‐Watkins, my marvelous child, for editorial skills, support, and love and kindness in all my pursuits.
Nancy Goldberg, friend and colleague with the biggest heart and support in all my pursuits, and through her deep thinking, logic, and thoughtful conversations throughout the years helped keep me focused on the right goals.
Kathleen Webb, friend and colleague, for her support, insightful advice, fantastic brain, and adroit teachings and conversations in Agile and Lean practices, invaluable to my thinking process.
Evelyn Calderon‐Yee, friend and colleague, for her continuous support and belief in all of my innovative ideas, and her effective implementation of our Agile auditing framework.
Judith W. Umlas, my kindred spirit, for her support and feedback and her unstoppable passion for helping the world become a better place by teaching how to be a grateful Agile leader and use the power of acknowledgment.
About the Authors
RAVEN CATLIN
Raven is an expert in the auditing field and a globally recognized speaker and instructor in risk management and internal audit. Raven possesses over 23 years of diverse audit experience and 19 years of instructing and facilitating a variety of courses. She loves the sciences, especially chemistry and biology, and started her secondary education at 16 years old with dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon. In her freshman year at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, Raven realized that the medical field wasn't for her and changed her major to Accounting. She joined Beta Alpha Psi, took an overload of classes to catch up to the other accounting sophomores, and hasn't looked back. Like most accounting majors, she was groomed to sit for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam and work for a big accounting firm. Unlike most, after graduating in 1997, she found her way into internal auditing after working as an accounting manager for a small manufacturing company whose number‐one client was Philip Morris. The president of the manufacturing company helped Raven secure an interview with Philip Morris to launch a fantastic career in internal auditing.
Raven performed reviews and audits of not‐for‐profit entities, philanthropic organizations, mutual funds, general banking operations, trust operations, mortgages, real estate lending, construction activities, benefits, compensation, payroll, procurement activities, accounting operations, marketing, governance, information technology, treasury management, cash management, derivatives, secondary marketing, and debt issuance, to name a few. Her industry expertise and audit experience include mortgage operations, mortgage‐backed securities, capital markets, human resources, and shared services.
She worked for NationsBank in Charlotte, North Carolina, and served as an audit consultant through the merger with Bank of America in Phoenix, Arizona. She served as an integral member of the financial restatement team for Freddie Mac in Fairfax, Virginia, where she currently resides. Additionally, she created project plans and coordinated over 150 individuals responsible for correcting security pricing as part of the Fannie Mae financial restatement. Raven performed a business process analysis and redesign (using Six Sigma and Lean) at the World Bank/International Finance Corporation and led an entity‐wide Fraud Risk Assessment for a regional bank and trust company. She developed and redesigned the auditing infrastructure for internal audit functions, including developing internal audit policies and procedures, implementing audit software, designing reporting and time management templates, designing audit committee packages, and implementing databases to report and track the progress of audit concerns.
Raven embraces the definition of internal auditing as a value‐added service and views all forms of auditing as being helpful to the success of an organization. Organizations in all industries have welcomed her fresh approach to auditing. The Agile audit approach explained in this book incorporates Raven's knowledge, experience, views, and people skills to form a fresh perspective to Agile auditing that auditors will find a great tool to add to their own audit toolbelt. In addition to maintaining her CPA license, she proudly displays her dedication to the audit profession by maintaining a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), a Certified Financial Services Auditor (CFSA), and Certification in Risk Management Assurance (CRMA) designations.
Raven is the founder and CEO of Raven Global Training, LLC, a provider of in‐house, virtual, and on‐site audit, risk management, and interpersonal skills training to corporations, governments, not‐for‐profits, and associations. Raven began sharing her knowledge of and love for the audit profession in 2001 when The Institute of Internal Auditors selected her as a course facilitator. Moreover, Raven has been developing, instructing, and facilitating courses, including Agile auditing, worldwide since 2006 exclusively through