Prototyping Strategies for the Agile Development of Additive Manufactured Products: A Case Study from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Frequent validations of physical product increments play an essential role for Agile Hardware Development (AHD). This paper presents practices for the accelerated embodiment of increments based on the analysis of an AHD project. It describes adaptations of established prototyping strategies for the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM), covering iterative refinement, parallel development, prototyping media change and scheduling of build phases. The application of the practices led to an accelerated embodiment process with mean iteration lengths of 6 days and a first release of a viable product increment within 18 days. By enabling early and frequent validations with tangible increments, the practices facilitate the effective application of AHD in practice.