Internal Software Audits are more effective than External Software Audits - Article Example

One of the major reasons behind this may be because today almost all the companies are aware of risk factors involved in the core functionalities. A software audit is a process of conducting elaborative and detailed examination of each and every activity with in the purview of policies followed in the organisation. It not only includes the identification of core business areas as well as the tools and technologies used for those functions, the validity of those technologies that is their licences and number of licenses for particular software package.

Therefore regular and timely audits are the great requirement of all the organization as it controls the occurrences of failures or frauds and helps in managing the risks. Thus software audits also helps in assuring the quality of the product whether it fulfils the requirement of customer or not. But they are not at all related to source code audits. All these factors demand that there must be some quantitative and qualitative way to check the quality of the software and software audits help tremendously in achieving this objective.

Broadly there are following two different types of audits, which can be further sub, divided into sub categories. In first party quality audits, coalescence to the documented and acknowledged quality systems is scrutinized. Broadly speaking it is a type of internal audit, which proves the correct functionality of quality management system in an organisation. The first party audit is accomplished within the purview of an organisation with the core objective of measuring its potency and frailty against the strategies and methodologies followed by the organisation, against the external standards obligatory on the organisation.

The organisation may recruit auditors, who don't have their benefits resides, for conducting such type of audits. According to the quality and environment audit standard ISO 19011 independence of audit team from the activities being audited is considered and conflicts of interest should be avoided when selecting the audit team members. Outsourcing an audit program to some other equally capable company saves the time of internal employees and they can do their day-to-day activities efficiently and effectively.

Moreover auditors are more objective and impartial and organisation may benefit from the experiences of auditors. They also help the organisation in formulating new policies, procedures, and practices and revise the existing ones. Internal auditors often help in executing other activities like merger, acquisition, and transition etc of an organisation. Thus they help the top management to adjudge preserve and regulate that include suitable documentation and audit trails during the organisation's acquisition planning and implementation processes.

An effective external audit function endow the board of directors and management with:Feasible certainty about the efficacy of internal control, accuracy and completeness of all the activities of an organisationAn independent and objective view of a organisation's activitiesInformation useful to directors and management in maintaining an organisation's risk management processes.The objective of recruiting