How to build trust without blind faith, verify without bureaucracy, and turn supplier compliance into true partnership.
Suppliers deliver the code, but trust delivers the car.
In this episode, we uncover why ASPICE success isn't about checklists — it's about relationships. Explore the Trust Cycle, the Three Amphora Rule, and the new art of engineering collaboration that turns process into partnership.
⚖️ The Trust Paradox
In theory, ASPICE promises alignment, transparency, and predictable quality.
In practice, it often delivers suspicion disguised as structure.
Every OEM wants to trust suppliers — but must verify them.
Every supplier wants to collaborate — but must defend itself.
The result? An ecosystem locked in polite distrust.
The more evidence we collect, the less we actually believe it.
🧱 The Great Firewall of Compliance
Imagine two engineering teams separated by a digital wall made of documents, checklists, and PowerPoint decks. Each side uploads "proof", but nobody actually knows the code on the other side.
That wall is what I call the Great Firewall of Compliance — a system optimized for audit defense, not for shared learning.
When evidence becomes a wall instead of a window. (Gemini generated image)
🔄 The Trust Cycle
To escape the firewall, we need a new rhythm of collaboration — a living loop where trust is continuously earned and renewed.
1. Transparency → 2. Verification → 3. Feedback → 4. Trust
Each stage feeds the next.
Without feedback, verification becomes surveillance.
Without transparency, trust becomes wishful thinking.
Trust isn't static — it's a living cycle of transparency, verification, feedback, and renewal. (Gemini generated image)
🧪 The Testing Mirage
On paper, one supplier was ASPICE Level 2 compliant.
In reality, they tested only once per release cycle — not per release.
They claimed "delta validation": only testing what had changed.
Sounds efficient — until you realize no one assessed regression risk for what didn't change.
Requirements coverage looked perfect — but robustness coverage was zero.
When the product reset in the field, the dashboards still glowed green.
Fantasy Delta Validation is dangerous because it replaces risk-based judgment with administrative imagination.
What about regression risks for non-tested parts presumed safe? No one owns them — until the failure reaches the customer.
Green dashboards can hide red realities. (Gemini generated image)
🧭 The Three Amphora Rule
In ancient trade, merchants used amphorae — clay vessels marked by both buyer and seller — to guarantee authenticity.
In modern engineering, we need the same: shared containers of evidence.
- Joint Requirements Amphora — Owned by both sides, includes risk rationale and context, not just text.
- Joint Verification Amphora — Holds real test artifacts: scripts, logs, metrics.
- Joint Learning Amphora — Captures post-release lessons for future collaboration.
Each amphora requires co-signature — a ritual of shared accountability.
If evidence doesn't live in a shared vessel, it's not collaboration — it's exchange of excuses.
Shared vessels of truth: Requirements, Verification, and Learning. (Gemini generated image)
目 The Supplier Maturity Ladder
Maturity isn't about process density — it's about trust velocity.
Each step up the ladder moves from compliance to co-creation.
The supplier maturity ladder.
Level 5 is rare — but it's where trust stops being contractual and becomes cultural.
From compliance to co-ownership: the five stages of supplier maturity. (Gemini generated image)
🧩 Engineer Liaisons, Not Gatekeepers
Traditional supplier managers check documents.
Future liaisons connect realities.
Their job: translate between process language and engineering truth.
Practical prompts they should regularly ask both sides:
- "Walk us through one of the newest features released — show the engineering trail."
- "How do you decide what gets regression testing after each drop?"
- "Where does product risk live — and who curates it?"
Good liaisons trace trust, not paperwork.
Liaisons don't guard gates — they bridge understanding. (Gemini generated image)
🧠 The Playbook: From Evidence to Ecosystem
Trust doesn't grow from more audits — it grows from shared work.
The real metric of maturity is how seamlessly verification turns into collaboration.
- Integrate Verification: run at least one joint test per major feature.
- Democratize Evidence: store artifacts in shared repositories, not attachments.
- Operationalize Feedback: close findings together, not through tickets.
- Measure Relationship Quality: track collaboration latency, not only defect counts.
- Reward Shared Learning: make joint retrospectives part of supplier KPIs.
🌍 Quality Becomes Relationship
When ASPICE works, it doesn't create perfect documents — it creates predictable people.
Trust becomes the invisible interface across organizations:
A shared rhythm of expectation, verification, and feedback.
Quality stops being a deliverable — and becomes a relationship.
Quality stops being a deliverable — and becomes a relationship. (Gemini generated image)
🔮 Epilogue: From Trust to Truth
Episode 10 closes the "collaboration" arc.
Episode 11 will open the "transcendence" arc — asking a bold question:
When data can prove anything, what does trust mean then?
🔜 Stay tuned for Episode 11 — The Metrics Mirage: When Numbers Help (and When They Hurt).
🔖 If you found this perspective helpful, follow me for more insights on software quality, testing strategies, and ASPICE in practice.
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