Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Software Development

Software development is a fast-growing field, uniquely transforming the lives of people. From automated drones to quick and easy code generators, software development has affected a significant portion of our lives.

In the past few years, software businesses have started looking towards innovative techniques in their software development approach. That new technique is artificial intelligence or AI. The reason for its recent popularity is the fact that makes many operational tasks simpler, easier, and more efficient.

Now, why would businesses want that? What is it about artificial intelligence that makes it such an attractive and high-demand technology being optimized by businesses in their software development practices? 

Let’s take a look at the different ways artificial intelligence is making a positive impact on software development methodologies and practices, and the major aspects of software development where AI can help you improve your functions. 

How Does AI Connect With Software Development

Artificial intelligence is a technology that helps us develop faster, more intelligent software products that can deliver more robust results. That means that by using AI, we ensure that our product is smarter, and better suited for the data-oriented world of tomorrow. 

That is because when we implement AI into our practices and software, we allow it to use the available data to generate valuable insights; insights that are then used by AI to make better, more effective decisions. 

Currently, over 80% of businesses in the software world are investing in AI implementation of some kind, highlighting the massive potential of this technology in helping businesses improve their functions. 

There are two major avenues where businesses are using AI nowadays, such as:

• Automating manual tasks for better efficiency
• Allows systems to make decisions using available data independently 

Positive Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Software Development

Now that we know the importance of AI in various industries, including software development, the next thing is to take a look at some of the vital impacts it has on your software development process. This is an important step in understanding why artificial intelligence needs to be implemented in your business because unless there is a net benefit to its implementation, including it would only increase costs. 

Let’s take a look at some of the ways it helps businesses improve their processes. 

Identifying Issues and Bugs Quicker and More Efficiently

By automating the testing process, AI can help businesses identify and highlight potential issues and bugs more quickly and efficiently than if a human does it. Moreover, for specific applications where automation may not be required, Ai can help testers and developers identify potential issues at the earliest stages possible, reducing the chances of them carrying over to mission-critical areas. 

Better, Smarter Software with Improved Critical Decision-Making

Secondly, by implementing artificial intelligence and related technologies like machine learning, deep learning, data science, big data, and more, developers will be able to build software that isn’t just better. This new software will be in a league of its own, way smarter than its counterparts, and better suited for the data-intensive world of tomorrow. 

Some great examples of these can be found in the current digital marketing and eCommerce software tools available, capable of building brands that are more attuned to the users’ needs and desires. 

More Accurate Results

Artificial intelligence is a great tool for generating insights and processing large amounts of data for trends. That means that if Ai technology is used well, it has the potential to help us improve the accuracy of our estimates. This is especially true for industries where there are large data banks to process in order to find critical actionable insights, such as financial and risk management institutions, and AI can process that data faster and more accurately than humans can. Similarly, Ai is also one of the popular new eCommerce technologies used by brands to stand out and boost their brand quickly. 

Common Areas Where AI is Useful in the Software Industry

So far, we have seen that AI can hugely impact businesses in several ways. However, if we talk about the software development industry specifically, what are the most popular applications or avenues we might see AI working in today?

Let’s dive in and find out where and how AI is helping transform the software development industry. 

Software Project Requirements Gathering

One of the most important phases of software development planning is the requirement-gathering stage. A business can gather requirements in multiple ways, often dictated by the type of market its software product is meant to target. For example, B2B software would use different ways to identify and gather requirements compared to a B2C software product. 

Now one of the key activities after getting the desired information from key stakeholders is to pinpoint critical factors and use them to identify the individual requirements of the product. This process of eliminating the essential data from the fluff can take quite a long while if done manually. However, with the help of various AI tools and techniques, you can do it in a far shorter time, and more easily too. 

For example, you can use NLP, or natural language processing, along with a variety of other AI and ML tools to understand the requirements at the system level straight from the stakeholders’ own words. And while these techniques still have their limitations, there are ways to reduce the possibility of those limitations affecting your results. 

Software Product Design

After the requirements gathering stage, another equally important step is the design phase. This is where you create the designs and layouts of the software product, and where you can define how a user interacts with your product. 

In recent years, the concept of user experience, or UX, has seen a huge boom.  That means that giving the users the right, enjoyable experience in terms of design is essential to creating a successful product. However, this process takes time, time that you or your brand may not have. This is where AI-based design can be of huge help. Tools like Bookmark’s AIDA can help developers understand their stakeholders’ requirements, and create complex layouts and designs based on that information easily. 

How it works is that AIDA takes all the required information, processes it, and creates a web design that addresses those desired requirements. If a stakeholder likes it, web designers can flesh it out and find a tune to match exactly what their stakeholder wants from their product. That is how AI can help with software layout design. 

AI-Based Code Generators

The process of writing code for a software application is still one of the most laborious and time-consuming tasks in a software development project. This results in a large portion of the project budget being utilized just for this one phase of development.

So, how can AI help us here? Businesses are using custom tools and proprietary solutions where they use AI to convert pseudocodes or natural language instructions into functioning code snippets. Now, keep in mind that this style of tool is not meant to be used independently, but instead designed to help speed up a software developer’s work. 

So, rather than writing the entire codebase themselves, developers can use them to generate simpler pieces of their code and integrate them with your codebase. For example, you want to develop an eCommerce website yourself, with a limited timeline. What can you do? 

You can use an AI code generator to create the structure of your website, as well as the large codebases necessary to set up the site. And once that is done, you can write the code for the critical sections or make any tweaks necessary, in order to get the site you desire. That is how you can use AI to help you develop projects more quickly. 

Software Testing Automated Using AI

Finally, Ai is a big advantage when it comes to software testing and quality assurance. For one, Ai allows us to automate the entire testing process, relieving us of assigning resources to that aspect of the project. Moreover, it can still be used to perform repetitive activities or less critical activities in order to save time, if you prefer to use a human tester to test your project. 

If that is an avenue that you prefer to use, then there is good news for you. Several Ai-based software testing tools can be used to automate the testing process, create robust test scenarios, and perform error-proof software testing activities. 

Some of the more popular tools on the market include Functionize and Testim.io, and you can use them to improve your testing process and reduce your spending at the same time. 

Conclusion

To conclude, artificial intelligence has changed the way enterprises approach software development, even though the use of AI in development is still quite rudimentary. However, as the field of AI advances, and more and more developers look to it to solve their pain points, artificial intelligence has the potential to change the entire software development industry, ushering in a new era of automation. 

So, if you are looking to implement AI techniques into your software development processes and strategies, the time is now.