Agile development methods are
widely utilized in software development. There is a growing interest and
effort to introduce them to other areas of technology, such as
development of space systems. Space systems are typically safety- and
mission-critical and therefore their development is strongly regulated
and standardized. European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS)
has created a collection of standards which are extensively followed
mainly in European space projects. In this paper, a review and
discussion are presented to find out the conflicts between the agile
development and the ECSS standards. The presented analysis and
discussion show that the ECSS standards do not fully prevent the
utilization of agile methods. However, there are aspects to be taken
into account in the development methods, contracts and tailoring of
standards.