"Assessments are objective." - But can they ever be?
You get the calendar invite: "ASPICE assessment, the assessors are coming next Monday." The room tightens. People clear their desks. PowerPoints multiply. Somewhere between the inbox and the first interview, the event stops being an engineering checkpoint and becomes a performance. 🎭
That reaction tells you everything you need to know about assessments: they are as much a story about people and incentives as they are about processes and checklists. Behind every ASPICE assessment sits a very human reality: project members under stress, assessors under commercial pressure, and sponsors expecting green results.
If Episode 3 was about choosing the right lens (capability vs. risk), this episode pulls aside the curtain on the stage itself - who's in the room, what they want, and how the human dynamics shape whether an assessment becomes a mirror 📝 or a mask 🎭.
👥 Who's in the Room - and What They Want
Three groups dominate the scene:
- Management → want reassurance in a shape they can present upward: charts, green statuses ✅, and a narrative that reduces risk to a soundbite.
- Project teams → want to keep delivering. Assessments feel like a distraction - or worse, a threat. Exposure could mean audits, blame, or headcount changes.
- Assessors → are supposed to be impartial witnesses. In practice, they're a mix: independent professionals, consultants, firms balancing integrity against commercial pressure.
Those tensions set the stage. The same assessment can be an invaluable mirror if everyone plays straight, or empty theater if incentives misalign.
Who's in the Room and What They Want: Three groups dominate the scene (Gemini generated image)
🔎 The Assessor: What Good Looks Like
A capable assessor is three things at once:
- 🧠 Analyst: They know engineering, not just checklists. They distinguish cosmetic gaps from systemic failures.
- ⚖️ Judge: They weigh evidence, see patterns, and avoid turning every missing artifact into a death sentence.
- 🤝 Facilitator: They listen, defuse defensiveness, and frame findings as opportunities, not verdicts.
- 🛡️ Integrity keeper: They resist pressure and document what they saw, not what management wanted them to see.
A good assessor leaves a team feeling clearer, not humiliated. They help turn observations into practical next steps.
🚫 When Assessors Go Wrong
The opposite is easy to spot:
- 📋 Checklist robots turn interviews into interrogations.
- 👑 Power-trippers breed silence - people hide issues instead of surfacing them.
- 🤗 Friendly rubber-stampers offer green comfort at the cost of long-term safety.
And here's the deeper issue: assessors are paid by those they assess. This creates the same dynamic we saw in The Big Short with financial rating agencies: too strict and the customer walks, too lenient and the business stays.
The Big Short: Rating Agencies Scene
Not a flattering parallel. Not a theoretical one either.
🧴 The Snake-Oil Playbook
Where incentives and fear collide, shortcuts flourish. Familiar moves include:
- 📑 Write-and-file processes - pretty procedures that exist on paper, not in practice.
- ⏳ "Resolved - later" promises - findings closed with vague commitments that never arrive.
- 🔄 Process reviews as pseudo-assessments - reports dressed up as capability results without real testing.
- 🛒 Assessment shopping - replacing strict assessors with "constructive" ones.
These tricks keep dashboards green ✅. They don't keep drivers safe 🚗.
🏆 Management Matters: Courage vs. Convenience
Leadership decides whether an assessment is useful or theatrical:
- Weak management 👉 buys polished slides and avoids friction. Comfort today, risk tomorrow.
- Courageous management 👉 tolerates red ink, invests in root-cause fixes, and protects psychological safety.
The real question for leaders: Do you want reports that comfort the board this quarter - or improvements that protect customers for years?
🛠️ Practical Moves for Teams Who Want Real Value
To turn assessments from theater into learning:
- 🎯 Frame as discovery, not judgment. Set expectations early.
- 📂 Prepare honest evidence. Show how you actually work.
- 👤 Appoint a calm liaison. One voice keeps context intact.
- 📌 Insist on clear findings. Demand prioritization and root-cause focus.
- 🛡️ Protect blamelessness. No one shares truth if punishment follows.
These small shifts change the game: from courtroom to workshop.
Which path will you choose? (Gemini generated image)
💡 Takeaway: Make the Assessment Earn Its Name
ASPICE assessments succeed or fail not because of the model, but because of the human choices around it.
When assessors stay curious, teams stay honest, and leaders stay courageous, assessments become mirrors for improvement. When incentives push the other way, they become masks for appearances.
If you care about real engineering quality, demand integrity, insist on honesty, and reward courage. That's how assessments stop being theater and start being tools for truth.
👉 Next up: Episode 5 - From Paper to Practice: Evidence, Work Products, and the Art of "Show, Don't Tell".
🔖 If you found this perspective helpful, follow me for more insights on software quality, testing strategies, and ASPICE in practice.
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