Automotive SPICE: Quality Assurance vs. Engineering – Who's Responsible?

Automotive SPICE: Quality Assurance vs. Engineering – Who's Responsible?

"Automotive SPICE is implemented by quality personnel, not engineers."
I hear this objection time and time again, but is it even true? And if it is, whose fault is it?

Let me clarify a common misconception. No quality professional starts as a "quality engineer" from birth. Many of us have transitioned into quality assurance after years in other roles. Take me as an example: I began my career as a programmer 25 years ago. I worked extensively in mission-critical programming for the aerospace industry and, before that, in the embedded systems domain. I spent 12 years wearing multiple hats – as a programmer, software project manager, team leader, and line manager – before moving into quality assurance.

And I'm not alone. Many of my colleagues share a similar path. For Automotive SPICE (aSPICE), especially in the mechatronics domain where it is most commonly applied, most quality professionals started out as developers in one area or another.

It's important to remember that aSPICE itself didn’t originate in academia. It was born from practical, real-world feedback. The primary mission of aSPICE is to help you avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again. That’s why we focus on processes, procedures, and repeatability.

But wait, you might say: "Petr, you’ve just confirmed that aSPICE is implemented by quality people, even if they’re qualified. That’s the old way, and we’re shiny, flashy, and new!"

To that, my answer is simple: aSPICE actively encourages you, the engineers, to participate. Let me explain how:

1. Process Improvement (PIM.3): aSPICE provides the Process Improvement Process (PIM.3), designed to run within your projects. This process collects feedback from engineers and directs it to process owners, enabling continuous improvement.

2. AgileSPICE Extension: If your team operates in an agile environment, the AgileSPICE extension includes processes specifically tailored for continuous improvement of project processes and work approaches.

3. Take Responsibility: Ideally, the process owner should be the most senior or knowledgeable person (or group of persons) in the specific area of engineering covered by the process. This could be the best project manager, requirements engineer, tester, or architect in your company.

4. Experiment and Improve: aSPICE encourages you to experiment, iterate, and refine your processes. Define measurable parameters (yes, I’m talking about those globally dreaded Process Performance Objectives) for your efficiency. Then, in an agile manner, modify and evaluate your procedures, toolchain, and approaches to have the best process suited to YOU.

Finally, remember this: aSPICE defines what you need to achieve, not how to achieve it. The "how" is entirely up to you, your team, and your company.

Take the aSPICE ideas and thrive from it, instead suffer.

And, of course, if you need helpwith that, just ask me for support

Petr