Inside Innovation Using AI — Planning and Analysis

Kudos, trailblazing #InsideInnovators, we’re loving how you use AI to enhance and amplify our partnership, across all stages of the software development lifecycle. Not using AI much yet? Read more below! 👇.

Were your ears 👂 burning recently, #Intrapreneurs? We were talking about you on our recent full team call, specifically regarding the practical ways you act as "Inside Innovators" to drive value. We want to encourage you to lean into AI during the early stages of our work together— #Planning, #Analysis, and #Design — to help define the scope before we start building.

Talk It Out (Rubber-Ducking)

Before we hop on a #Scoping call, you might find value in #RubberDucking with an AI agent 🤖 .

Talking through your initial thoughts helps expand on what you actually need from a system rather than just listing features.

For example, one of our innovative clients who runs a t-shirt printing company riffs with #ChatGPT to think through #Logic — like how to handle POs and line items — and then sends us the transcript 📩 . This pre-work kicks off our conversation with a clear direction rather than a blank slate.

The Interview Technique Instead of asking AI for answers, direct it to interview you . Tell the agent: "Ask me 10 questions about this problem to help me clarify my needs" ❓.

This approach draws out #Requirements you might not have realized were missing and helps organize your thoughts before we dig into the formal #RequirementsAnalysis.

Declutter & Visualize

Do you have existing #Dashboards that feel bloated with data just for the sake of it ? AI can help restructure that information 📉.

Try taking a screenshot of your current graphs and prompting an AI tool to reorganize the sections logically. Marcus Stiehler on our team used this technique to simplify complex data for a client, resulting in a cleaner, more structured #UI that was easier to read ✨

Diagramming Workflows

For those who prefer visual #SystemsPlanning, tools like #MermaidJS offer AI interfaces to build flow charts and entity-relationship diagrams . You can input a text document describing your process and ask the tool to generate a diagram from it 🖼️ . This helps clarify the #ProcessFlow before we write a single line of code.

Wrap Up: By using AI to clarify your #Vision, you empower us to build exactly what you need . You bring the #DomainExpertise; AI helps you package it 📦 .

Next Up:  Once the plan is set, the focus shifts to implementation. Next, we look at using AI to solve the "empty database" problem with realistic #TestData 🧪.