NewSpace or entrepreneurial space ecosystem focused on rapid development and market-driven approach of small satellites. Agile development strives for the flexibility to change one function at a time, and system engineering (SE) deals with minimizing risk in defined requirements. To accommodate the NewSpace ecosystem, Systems Engineering should be capable of adopting an inevitable agile approach. However, Mode-Based System Engineering (MBSE) has proven its significance as an agile enabler to support risk mitigation and maximize dependability.

Various previous literature has proposed the integration of popular agile methods into MBSE for the development of complex and small satellite missions. Agile Although and MBSE possess the core value of alignment, the challenges are that Agile requires a dynamic and flexible attitude, while MBSE maintains a comprehensive design process. Integration is required to overcome misalignment in the quality attributes of MBSE by maintaining the strength of both paradigms simultaneously to ensure the reliability of development and keep the risk minimal.

In (Nakhost et al., 2023), the authors present challenges and opportunities of MBSE in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAF). The main challenge presented is the high initial cost and not knowing when to stop the model. To answer this challenge, the authors suggest that focusing on solution-intent modeling and providing model templates for implementation and guidelines eases the difficulty. To develop these guidelines, it is important to consider the fundamental phases of MBSE.
This paper first studies the evaluation of MBSE methods to determine their capabilities to align with agile principles through the phases of MBSE.