Common challenges faced by IT Auditors in agile teams

As organizations adopt agile methodologies to accelerate product development, IT Auditors face new challenges in maintaining compliance, data integrity, and risk control. Agile environments prioritize speed and iteration, often clashing with the structure and documentation that traditional audits rely on. To remain effective, IT Auditors must adapt their approaches and tools while fostering stronger collaboration with development teams. Here's a closer look at the common challenges and how to address them.

1. Lack of Documentation and Traceability

Agile teams often deprioritize formal documentation in favor of rapid iteration. This can leave IT Auditors without adequate evidence to assess controls and compliance.

• User stories may lack detail about security or control implementation
• Changes may be pushed without corresponding audit trails
• Sprint artifacts may not align with audit requirements

Solution: Work with teams to integrate audit logging and tagging into issue tracking systems like JIRA. Use automated tools to document CI/CD workflows and infrastructure changes.

2. Continuous Delivery Reducing Visibility

In a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, code can be released multiple times a day—making it hard to review each change manually.

• Traditional change management controls may be bypassed
• Auditors may miss risk introduced by small, frequent changes

Solution: Establish checkpoints in the CI/CD process where automated control validations are run (e.g., vulnerability scans, role approvals). Leverage version control systems for traceability.

3. Minimal Auditor Involvement in Planning Phases

Agile teams often overlook compliance requirements in early planning. This makes it harder to bake controls into the development lifecycle.

• Security and audit concerns are treated as afterthoughts
• Risk assessments are skipped or rushed

Solution: Include IT Auditors in sprint planning and retrospectives. Use the “shift left” principle to address risks earlier in the development cycle.

4. Misalignment Between Agile Values and Audit Standards

Agile promotes autonomy, speed, and change—while audits emphasize control, stability, and documentation. This philosophical clash can cause friction.

• Auditors may be seen as blockers or outsiders
• Developers may resist traditional audit processes

Solution: Position auditors as enablers of secure, compliant development. Promote agile-compatible control frameworks like DevSecOps and encourage collaboration, not control by enforcement.

5. Tool Incompatibility and Automation Gaps

Audit tools may not integrate well with the tools agile teams use. This creates data silos and increases manual effort.

• Audit evidence may be scattered across different platforms
• Control checks may require time-consuming manual validation

Solution: Adopt APIs, integrations, and scripts to bridge tools. Automate evidence collection, access reviews, and configuration validation within agile workflows.

6. Short Sprint Cycles Limit Audit Engagement

With development moving in 1?2 week sprints, auditors may struggle to keep up. There's little time for post-mortem reviews or delayed control testing.

Solution: Move toward real-time or continuous auditing. Leverage dashboards and alerts that provide auditors with ongoing visibility into key risk indicators.

Final Thoughts

IT Auditors working in agile environments must evolve from periodic reviewers to embedded collaborators. By adapting tools, redefining processes, and embracing automation, auditors can uphold compliance and control—without slowing down innovation. When audit is seen as a value-add, not an obstacle, it becomes an integral part of building secure, high-performing software.