The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope. Unlike traditional radio telescopes the SKA will be defined largely by its software. Production is expected to start next year and will involve well over 100 developers working together to deliver a complex system consisting of everything from control systems to high throughput signal processing to science pipelines running on cloud-like infrastructure. The challenge of managing and organising this effort to a single purpose, and delivering the telescope on time and budget is considerable. To make this achievable, the SKA has adopted the Scale Agile Framework and is currently working towards putting this into practice. While more commonly used for large software projects in industry, this is a rather novel approach for the astronomical community. In this poster we will introduce the approach being taken and the tools being used to implement it for the SKA project.
