When Software Development Meets the Shopfloor: The Case of Industrial Fablabs

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how software is being developed in industrial fabrication laboratories (fablabs) located in real production environments, by the example of a smart factory project conducted by a large company in Europe. Our findings suggest that, when developing software in industrial fablabs, teams tend to drift away from established software engineering methods and practices and to adapt them impromptu in order to cope with the seemingly arcane sociotechnical environment of the factory.