AI-Assisted Programming

Chapter 7. Ideas, Planning, and Requirements

In this chapter, we’ll dig into the important early stages of making software. This is where all the cool ideas come alive and where we plan them out so they’re ready to go. We’re going to use ChatGPT to brainstorm effectively and plan things down to the last detail. We’ll look at market research, keep an eye on trends, and check out the competition. We’ll also talk about whiteboarding, which is a fun, visual way to throw around ideas and make them better. Plus, we’ll dive into how to plan your project, looking at methods like Agile and Scrum, and how to tweak them to fit your software project.

Brainstorming

Thousands of software products pop up every day, so it’s no walk in the park to make something that really shines and stands out from the crowd. But with an LLM like ChatGPT, you can do some brainstorming.

First of all, you can have it provide different approaches. Here’s a prompt:

Prompt: What are techniques for brainstorming ideas for new products? Use the internet to research this question.

ChatGPT dished out 10 helpful approaches—here’s a peek at a few of them:

ChatGPT:

• 5 Whys: You start with a problem and keep asking “why” it happened. It’s handy for looking back and figuring out what went wrong.

• Bad Idea: Think up a bunch of terrible ideas on purpose. Chatting about why they’re so bad can actually spark clever solutions.

• Starbursting: This is about questions, not answers. You use a star-shaped diagram and hit it with ...