Automotive SPICE^® - The Consistent Alignment of Processes

Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (Automotive SPICE^® is the de facto standard in the automotive industry for the evaluation and improvement of development processes for software-based systems in vehicles.

Automotive SPICE^® is a combined process reference and process assessment model and is based based on an initiative of the Automotive Special Interest Group (AUTOSIG) of the of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) and corresponds to the ISO 330xx family of standards for process assessments.

SynSpace has been a leading partner for the introduction and improvement of Automotive SPICE^®-compliant development processes. With our many years of expertise from numerous projects, our experienced consultants, trainers and assessors and our involvement in the our involvement in the design and further development of Automotive SPICE^® in the relevant committees, we offer best-in-class support for our customers. We will be happy to assist you.

In preparation for an Automotive SPICE Assessment, information about the organization, the processes and the projects to be assessed is collected. The result is an assessment structure plan that is agreed with the project owner.

An Automotive SPICE^® assessment starts with a short briefing of all assessment participants by the sponsor and the assessment team leader. An essential part of the assessment is the collecting, recording and evaluating of objective evidence of the process implementation in the assessed project. For this purpose, interviews with the process executors take place, as well as preparatory, accompanying and post-processing document reviews. Only sufficiently complete and complementary evidence ensures the objective basis for a standard-compliant, verifiable and repeatable assessment of the process attributes from which the capability level of the individual processes is derived.

SynSpace has developed a special assessment tool with which the analyses are carried out directly on site. With the help of the tool, detailed result reports are prepared directly for the assessment participants in the form of a slide presentation. This report documents the capability levels of the processes. It is divided into two sections:

Have you identified weaknesses in your process landscape? Have you been shown improvement measures in your development project as part of an OEM assessment? Or would you like to train your quality assurance colleagues on Automotive SPICE^®? In these cases, it may make sense to choose an experienced partner who can either support your QA or provide you with competent advice on improvement measures.

Among other things, we support them with standard requirements of Automotive SPICE^® processes, perform reviews, check if all relevant documents are processed accordingly and perform a knowledge transfer to the project participants of our customers, so that a substantial Automotive SPICE^® competence build-up can take place.

Why should you engage SynSpace to perform an assessment or support your Automotive SPICE^® improvement project?

We are experts in evaluating development processes according to Automotive SPICE^® with many years of experience in large development projects for OEMs and Tier 1 and 2 suppliers.
Synspace is part of the intacs working group, which is composed of Automotive SPICE experts from industry and academy.

Together with its partners, SynSpace offers two different types of Automotive SPICE^® trainings.

Automotive SPICE^® Module Trainings

Individual module trainings are offered for the process elements of the VDA Scope. The goal of these trainings is that the participants know the individual process elements and the corresponding Base Practices (BPs) and, to some extent, Generic Practices (GPs), can overview them and classify them for their work process.

intacs^® certified Provisional Assessor (Automotive SPICE^® 4.0) Training and intacs^® certified Competent Assessor (Automotive SPICE^® 4.0) Training

The intacs^® certified Provisional Assessor (Automotive SPICE^® 4.0) and intacs^® certified Competent Assessor (Automotive SPICE^® 4.0) seminars prepare you for the exam to become an “intacs^® Automotive SPICE^® Certified Provisional or intacs^® certified Competent Assessor (Automotive SPICE^® 4.0)”. You will learn about the Automotive SPICE^® v4.0 process assessment model, which is usually used in assessments in the automotive industry. Through numerous practical exercises and tips, you will learn how to deal with individual topics in assessments. Finally, you will be able to independently assess processes according to Automotive SPICE^® in your own company or at suppliers and optimize them based on this.

What is Automotive SPICE^®?

In 2005, the Automotive Special Interest Group published the industry-specific standard Automotive SPICE^®, derived from the new ISO 15504 International Standard (IS) for Software Process Assessments.

These standards, also known as SPICE – the abbreviation for Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination – represent an international agreement on the performance of assessments of business processes. These general assessment standards have been concretized for the automotive industry by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) and standardized in the form of the Automotive SPICE^® variant. The assessment criteria defined in Automotive SPICE^® are used, among others, by the automotive manufacturers themselves and by supplier companies in this industry. For the improvement and assessment of processes in a company according to the Automotive SPICE^® criteria, a thorough understanding of the required standards is necessary, a task SynSpace has dedicated itself to.

Why is Automotive SPICE^® so important for the automotive industry?

The market requirements for environmental friendliness, safety, economic efficiency and user-friendliness demand innovations with increasing complexity at ever shorter intervals in the automotive industry. The associated shorter development times and increasing demands on reliability make it essential to improve development processes. By involving suppliers in component development, end-to-end process maturity is a decisive competitive factor.