ashfordeOU ECSS Space Software Engineering (space-systems/ecss/software-engineering)
Use when the task is space software engineering under the ECSS series: criticality classification, assurance rigor, lifecycle gates, and heritage reuse.
Domain quick reference
- The ECSS series is the European space procurement baseline: E-ST-10C (systems engineering), E-ST-40C (software engineering), Q-ST-80C (software product assurance), M-ST-40 (configuration management).
- E-ST-40C classes software by failure consequence: A = loss of life or total loss of mission, B = major mission degradation, C = minor degradation, D = negligible effects.
- Assurance and verification rigor scale with the category; Q-ST-80C carries the product assurance evidence expectations.
- Heritage reuse demands a heritage assessment against the original verification evidence, full evidence at categories A/B.
Workflow
- Classify the software criticality category from the failure consequences.
- Size assurance and verification rigor for the category.
- Run the lifecycle phases (requirements, design, implementation, verification, validation, acceptance), gating each on its review record.
- For reused software, scope the heritage assessment and evidence.
- Confirm rigor and evidence sets with the project product assurance plan.
Pitfalls
- Category assigned from mission value instead of failure consequence.
- Heritage software reused at category A without the full original verification evidence.
- Advancing a phase without its review record (gate skipped).
- Rigor fixed without the product assurance plan.
Behavior contract (gate 3)
The criticality, rigor, lifecycle-gate, and heritage logic is exercised by the gate 3 contract test: scripts/test_ecss.py against scripts/ecss_logic.py (stdlib unittest, offline). Run: python3 scripts/test_ecss.py
Compliance
- ECSS standards are freely downloadable (ESA); cite the source and paraphrase per standards-map.yaml.
- compliance: STANDARDS-REF, gated: false.