Zach Lloyd defines a software factory as a cloud-based agentic system that assigns agents roles in building software for a team or product and gives the system some autonomy.

“When I talk to companies or developers, most of the world is trying to build some sort of internal software factory or set of software factories. What, what I think it means, or maybe I'll just define what it means to me, is like a agentic system in the cloud where you're defining what are the roles of various agents across building software for your team or for your product, and there's a certain amount of autonomy in that system.”