Automotive SPICE®: Quality assurance - SUP.1

Introduction

The quality assurance (QA) process in Automotive SPICE (also known as SUP.1) helps organizations provide "independent" verification that quality objectives are met and deviations are resolved.

Generally speaking, independent quality assurance engineers work closely with the developersI. If the quality goals are not met, the QA engineers can help facilitate corrective action. If necessary, they can escalate open issues to management through an independent reporting channel.

We regard the following as the most important aspects of quality assurance in Automotive SPICE:

• Establish a great quality assurance strategy. A good strategy makes it clear to all involved which are the quality objectives and how can they be achieved. Collect the right quality objectives and confirm that quality checks are aligned with these objectives. This alignment enables more concentrated efforts on priority items for the business.
• Set up effective quality assurance methods. Have an independent quality assurance (QA) engineer to support the project. The QA engineer helps the project team to plan and perform their reviews and tests. The QA engineer further checks whether the project team is carrying out these activities correctly and on time.
• Effectively resolve quality problems. The QA engineer will likely talk to the individual responsible for resolving the quality problem and agree on a corrective action and a due date. When the due date is past, the QA engineer checks whether the corrective action has been completed. If not, a reminder is sent and a new due date is set and followed up on again. The QA engineer could escalate the open issue to the next level of management if there is an unwillingness to cooperate.

Automotive SPICE® – quality assurance process

The purpose of the quality assurance process is to provide independent and objective assessment that work products and processes comply with predefined provisions and plans and that non-conformances are resolved and further prevented.

Best practice (BP)1: Develop a project quality assurance strategy. Develop a strategy to verify that work product and process quality assurance is performed at the project level  ̶  independently and objectively without conflicts of interest.

• Note 1: Aspects of independence may be financial and/or organizational structure.
• Note 2: Quality assurance may be coordinated with, and make use of, the results of other processes such as verification, validation, joint review, audit and problem management.
• Note 3: Process quality assurance may include process assessments and audits, problem analysis, regular check of methods, tools, documents and the adherence to defined processes, reports and lessons learned that improve processes for future projects.
• Note 4: Work product quality assurance may include reviews, problem analysis, reports and lessons learned that improve the work products for further use.

BP2: Confirm quality of work products. Perform the activities according to the quality assurance strategy and the project schedule to helpthe work products meet the defined work product requirements and document the results.

• Note 5: Relevant work product requirements may include requirements from applicable standards.
• Note 6: Non-conformances detected in work products may be entered into the problem resolution management process (SUP.9) to document, analyze, resolve, track to closure and prevent the problems.

BP3: Confirm quality of process activities. Perform the activities according to the quality assurance strategy and the project schedule to verify that the processes meet their defined goals and document the results.

• Note 7: Relevant process goals may include goals from applicable standards.
• Note 8: Problems detected in the process definition or implementation may be entered into a process improvement process (PIM.3) to describe, record, analyze, resolve, track to closure and prevent the problems.

BP4: Summarize and communicate quality assurance activities and results. Regularly report performance, deviations and trends of quality assurance activities to relevant parties for information and action according to the quality assurance strategy.

BP5: Check resolution of non-conformances. Deviations or non-conformance found in process and product quality assurance activities should be analyzed, tracked, corrected and further prevented.

BP6: Implement an escalation mechanism. Establish and maintain an escalation mechanism according to the quality assurance strategy so thatquality assurance may escalate problems to appropriate levels of management and other relevant stakeholders to resolve them.

Output work products

• Quality plan
• Communication record
• Problem record
• Quality record
• Review record
• Corrective action register
• Quality criteria

Quality assurance: advanced tutorial  

What is the benefit of quality assurance?  

Quality assurance provides an independent view into a project, how it is run and how the processes are executed and the work products created. Consistent process and work product audits identify quality issues and offers the ability to respond to them as soon as they are identified. Finding the issues early reduces the number of errors found in late project phases, reducing expensive rework and effort. 

What is the content of the quality assurance process? 

• A project-specific quality assurance strategy is developed and implemented. (BP1) 
• There needs to be an organizational structure of quality assurance independent of the development organization. (BP1) An escalation mechanism (BP6) needs to be established.  
• The activities according to the strategy are carried out in order to support both the quality of the produced work products (BP2) and the processes. (BP3)  
• Results of quality assurance activities are summarized and regularly reported. (BP4) 
• Non-conformances found are assigned to the responsible people for action and are tracked to closure. Action should be taken to prevent that these non-conformances happen again. (BP5) 

Considerations for typical challenges 

Quality assurance is a concept that covers the entire development process, from initiation to development, and through post-production. The process is put in place to provide assurance (to clients, senior management and other stakeholders) that the development processes have been adhered to and the work products conform to specifications. 

Consider: 

• The project manager and the development team, not the aquality assurance engineer, are responsible for the quality within the project.  
• The quality assurance engineer supports the project team, e.g., by setting up an effective quality assurance strategy and confirming that this strategy is actually followed. This includes the checks described in BP2 and BP3. 
• Quality assurance must be independent and performed objectively, without conflicts of interest. 
• Quality assurance engineers are sometimes responsible for several projects, which often leads to conflicts and a lack of auality assurance support in these projects. 
• The implementation of quality assurance for work products is mainly the responsibility of the developers, e.g., reviews and tests of work products. The quality assurance engineer checks whether these activities have been done correctly and completely. Results are reported and, in case of unresolved issues, escalation of open times to management would be initiated. 
• It is critically important to establish and document quality criteria by which to judge work product quality. This helps clarify that doing a review or a test is important, but actually the point is to determine if what was reviewed or tested is actually good enough to deliver. To determine this, specific criteria must be established and utilized (e.g., in review checklists). 

Learn more about Automotive SPICE®  

If you want to learn more about Automotive SPICE®, check out our ASPICE Training.

About the author

Klaus Hoermann started working with Automotive SPICE® in 1998. Since then, he has performed hundreds of assessments and trainings. His passion to bring hard-to-understand models to life so that everyone can understand them.

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