Technical Debt Management in Automotive Software Industry

The suppliers of software-intensive electronic automotive components are facing technical challenges due to the innovation rush and the growing time pressure from customers. As the quality of on-board automotive electronic systems is strongly dependent on the quality of their development practices, car manufacturers and suppliers proactively focus on improving technical and organizational processes. Automotive SPICE (ASPICE) is today the reference standard for assessing and improving automotive electronics processes and projects in this setting. As car manufacturers use ASPICE to qualify their suppliers of software-intensive systems, such a standard becomes a market demand. This paper identifies and discusses the benefits and impact of the integration and harmonization of Technical Debt Management (TDM) in an ASPICE-compliant software development project. Besides this paper provides a conceptual framework and a reference process description for the integration of ASPICE and TDM practices in a sample Software Engineering process.