The Becoming of Problems: A Processual Account of Engineering Troubleshooting

Engineering troubleshooting involves making sense of trouble while working toward containment or resolution within the conditions of professional practice. As inquiry and action unfold, engineers’ understanding of the relevant problem may also change. This work analyzes semi-structured interviews with 21 engineers, each with more than ten years of industry experience, across 20 interviews and seven industry designations to examine how troubleshooting problems are formed and transformed in practice. The existing body of literature explains aspects of this work, including ill-structured problem solving, representational and experiential sensemaking, and the sociotechnical organization of engineering activity. We show that these dimensions operate jointly and recursively within professional engineering troubleshooting. Across the episodes, the operative problem changed as engineers revised what observations indicated, which system was under inquiry, what actions were available or warranted, how work had to be coordinated, and what could count as sufficient resolution within the relevant sociotechnical conditions. We argue that adequate descriptions of troubleshooting problem recognition, pursuit, and restructuring require attention to these relationships. For engineering education, the claim connects readiness for engineering troubleshooting in industry to a clear pedagogical goal: students need practice recognizing, framing, and revising their understanding of problems as evidence, representations, and constraints change.