ASPICE 101: The Complete Guide for Automotive Development

ASPICE started as a variation of the ISO/IEC 15504, or SPICE, standard. SPICE stands for “Software Process Improvement and Capability determination.” The SPICE standard began as a way to provide a framework for independent assessors to evaluate an organization’s capability for software development. As other teams and manufacturers looked for software suppliers, this SPICE score could serve as one way to evaluate whether the developer could meet certain standards for performance, safety, and quality. Though the SPICE standard didn’t gain much
traction in other development fields, it did start to take hold in automotive as German auto manufacturers began using it. As the standard became focused more toward automotive, the moniker “AutomotiveSPICE” or “ASPICE” took hold. As it stands now, ASPICE is a process assessment model and a process reference model for software development in the automotive industry. Software teams who design and develop software for the automotive industry should use ASPICE to document processes and measure the maturity of the organization’s processes.