Effectiveness of the Scrum Methodology for Agile Development of Space Hardware

We present the preliminary results of our investigation on the effectiveness of the Serum methodology for Agile development of space hardware. We analyze the development process of a hardware payload that is part of a host nanosatellite mission composed of two 6U CubeSats (30cm × 20cm × 10cm). The host mission is a collaboration with several partners including academia and small and medium enterprises. Scrum is a product development process created as a faster, more effective way of developing software. The goal of our investigation is to understand whether and by how much the same Scrum principles that proved successful in software can be adopted vis-à-vis in hardware projects. We also intend to identify the fundamental challenges in such an approach for space missions. In the host mission, Scrum has been adopted for the development of the payload subject to the investigation. The paper introduces the ongoing development process and identifies Scrum-related challenges internal to the payload development and challenges related to the coordination of the process with partners adopting established development processes. The paper identifies opportunities of future work for the fine tuning of Agile development methodologies in space projects and illustrates key statistics that have been collected throughout the development so far.