Systems Development Projects: How Internal Auditors Can Improve Success Rates - PDF

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IT systems development project failures are expensive, with an estimated cost to the world economy of US $6.2 trillion annually. This is not surprising given the dismal success rates—only 32 percent of major systems development projects are reported as completed successfully. It doesn’t have to be this way!

As the recognized control experts in most organizations, internal auditors have the skill set and professional viewpoint that can contribute to increasing project success. With failure rates so high, even a modest increase in the success rate can yield significant cost savings for most organizations.

Authors Glen Gray, Anna Gold, Christopher Jones, and David Miller conducted a series of focus groups and surveyed The IIA membership and found:

• Waiting until the post-implementation review to get involved in the project is too late. If you have not been invited to the party, it is OK to invite yourself.Being proactive pays.
• Some critical success factors are more critical than others. Hundreds of suggestions were distilled into some 90 metrics for 16 critical success factors.
• Old conventional wisdom—internal auditors add the most value to systems development projects by designing application controls. New conventional wisdom—internal auditors can add even more value by suggesting, designing, monitoring, and/or testing systems development project controls.

Systems Development Projects: How Internal Auditors Can Improve Success Rates provides strategies and risk assessment guidelines for doing just that. Readers will learn how to get involved sooner rather than later, well before the project kickoff meeting, to bring success.