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The AGILE principles in the software industry seems well adapted to the paradigm of CubeSat missions that involve students for the development of space missions. Some of well-known engineering and program processes are revisited on the example of an interplanetary CubeSat mission profile that has been developed by several teams of students in various countries and at various educational levels since 02/2013. The lessons learned at adapting traditional space mission methods are emphasized and they produce a metaphoric image of paving stones.The level of quality management in space projects, with their reviews and tools like the "V-cycle" and the TRL indicator, is high due to their natural complexity. Nowadays the CubeSat technology is expanding rapidly and aims at helping students build their satellites. Beyond the educational value, are the CubeSats serious candidates for subsystem qualification or even for science? The Paris Observatory is familiar with large space missions, so the space campus CERES has been established to incubate this new kind of small space missions. Indeed students permit low-cost missions with a quick development but they also introduce new risks to be managed. Furthermore the academic cycles are not adapted to the traditional phases and reviews of space projects. New engineering methods must emerge.The AGILE principles come from the software industry as an attempt to decrease the constraints of development procedures and to increase the responsiveness to the customer. We decided to apply the AGILE principles to BIRDY, a scientific CubeSat project. BIRDY involves mainly students from the Paris Observatory and the Taiwanese university NCKU for various durations on many engineering work-packages. It is an ideal methodological prototype for CERES to set an operational adaptation of the AGILE principles to a space project with many actors and topics. CERES is an "incubator" where experts and students can design a new CubeSat from scratch in concurrent engineering from the mission profile up to the integration. Already one engineering cycle was completed for BIRDY in 2013 using ESA's Spiral Model as a central method. Some lessons were learned and the second engineering cycle has started in April 2014 under AGILE principles. We first installed a shared workspace and defined some roles for the students. Then we set up a process for iterations called the "runs" lasting from 1 to 3 weeks each. At the middle of this second cycle, we can provide some initial feedback and every student's involvement is seen as a unique stone that paves the project like a handwork pavement. The project management is now mature and a third engineering cycle for BIRDY will start in September 2014 with new students starting from the results of the previous cycle. It will also be an opportunity to transfer the feedback from BIRDY to new CubeSat projects that are just starting at Paris Observatory's space campus CERES.* boris.segret@obspm.fr; phone +33 1 45 07 78 24;

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