The Test SPICE PAM has been an integral part of the intacs® portfolio for about 10 years. There is a small support group there, which has been dedicated to the dissemination and further development of the PAM since 2021.
In these 10 years, a lot has developed in the field of testing, in particular agile development processes (Scrum / Kanban) and test automation of unit and integration tests occupy the test community.
At the end of this development there are some surprising findings:
- There are no more overall test strategies, testing is fragmented and the overview has been lost, especially in large organizations.
- As much as Automotive SPICE® focused on the topic of process capability, it had the side effect that many organizations saw SPICE as outside their software development and not integrated into their daily business. Result: Only so much is done in the test that the target level is somehow reached.
- Testing is still at the top of the food chain. Essential testing steps are outsourced to nearshore or off-shore test centers. Significant weaknesses came to light in many Automotive SPICE® assessments.
- Test methods, although explicitly named in ISO 26262, are not used or are not used in a comprehensible manner.
- Test tools are pure test case management tools, test case design takes place outside of these tools. This inevitably leads to a loss of information. This also means that test cases are designed several times (albeit with different descriptions) and, if necessary, also automated.
- The test case stocks in the test case management tools are hardly comprehensible. In some organizations, the proportion of redundant test cases is 50-60% of the test case inventory.
- At the same time, testing is under high cost pressure.
All of this should be a reason to take a more fundamental look at the subject of testing. For this purpose, Test SPICE provides a reference model that enables a fully scalable analysis of the testing procedure. Test SPICE is currently available in version 4.0, which can be downloaded from the intacs® website.
The Working Group Test SPICE is of course happy to receive feedback from the community, and new members are also very welcome. Our next steps are:
1) Test SPICE is checked for compatibility with newer versions of ISO 33063, ISO 29119 and possibly other models. Result, a high level mapping, which again proves the compatibility of Test SPICE.
2) For Test SPICE, a 1-2 day training will be set up as a model extension training for Intacs certified assessors. The aim of this training is for intacs®-certified assessors to become familiar with Test SPICE.
Feel free to contact the Working Group with detailed questions. https://intacs.info/index.php/cb-profile/tomasschweigert