Situation
A leading global UK-based embedded system development consultancy who were looking to develop a safety critical software product, needed assistance with an ASPICE informative Gap Analysis and Functional Safety process for compliance.
The organisation realised they needed support with the ASPICE informative Gap Analysis and Confirmation reviews, specifically with regard to achieving the following goals:
- Assess existing capability level for software engineering life cycle processes
- Assess existing capability level for management and supporting processes
- Achieve good confidence level with ISO 26262 compliant SDLC processes and supporting processes
- Complete confirmation reviews to ensure fulfilment of ISO 26262 requirements
- Overall project quality improvement and process improvements
- Meet customer’s expectations for ASPICE capability levels and ISO 26262
This was a safety critical development using the Infineon AURIX™ microcontroller. Several well-known Tier 1 customers from Europe, USA and Asia have already used this safety manager software and integrated it into their AURIX™ applications.
Approach
3SK supported this well-respected organisation with an ASPICE informative Gap Analysis and ISO 26262 Confirmation reviews.
Our approach was simple and comprehensive:
- Detailed reviews and discussions with our customer to understand their expectations from ASPICE and ISO 26262.
- Performing Gap Analysis to understand the current Process Profile Matrix for the selected scope.
- Assessment of 3 key inter-related ASPICE process areas: Software Engineering Process Group (SWE), Supporting Process Group (SUP) and Management Process Group (MAN). We also provided detailed analysis reports for each of these areas.
- Reporting back with detailed findings from the Gap Analysis, and providing additional recommendations to improve.
- Helping our customer set out realistic and achievable process goals and capability level expectations.
- Deriving detailed process improvement plans for weak process areas.
- Performing detailed confirmation reviews.
Outcomes:
- All the results from each analysis stage were shared by 3SK back to the embedded development company, which included a detailed verification report for Functional Safety (FuSa) Standard, ISO 26262.
- Based on the results from completing the Gap Analysis, we worked closely with our client as they went on to develop their process improvement plan. We supported them through this work with some additional workshops and training sessions.
- Additionally, as recommended by both ASPICE and FuSa ISO 26262, confirmation reviews were performed without conflict of interest due to the appropriate degree of independence between ourselves and our client.
Summary
