At least the core processes should be proven and available for audit prior to undertaking a certification audit. An auditor requires evidence; a documented process that has not been fully enacted cannot be audited and therefore, you would not be ready for certification. However, a process that is only just recently changed but 80% of the process history remains would be considered sufficient to continue to audit. All core processes, such as proposal, report, body of the job, i.e., data collection, coding, analysis, must have a minimum of 3 months history with several projects having worked through the system from proposal to reporting for a system to be ready for audit.