Investigation on Common Software Process Weaknesses in Automotive

This paper presents the results of an empirical study aimed at pointing out common weaknesses in software development in automotive industry. In automotive software development is mainly demanded to specialized software suppliers that are required by car makers to improve and measure the process quality of their projects by applying process models such as Automotive SPICE^TM. The authors, as Automotive SPICE assessors, have directly observed and analyzed specific software process improvement opportunities during a significant number of assessments performed at several organizations. This paper, that focuses specifically on the project management and quality assurance processes, is an initial step of a wider study that the authors are carrying out. Such a study aims at identifying, using data from automotive software development projects, common software development weaknesses having negative impact according Automotive SPICE^TM, in order to give a reference for improvement initiatives aimed at solving those weaknesses.