Requirements are All You Need: From Requirements to Code with LLMs

Abstract

The pervasive use of textual formats in the documentation of software requirements presents a great opportunity for applying large language models (LLMs) to software engineering tasks. High-quality software requirements not only enhance the manual software development process but also position organizations to fully harness the potential of the emerging LLMs technology. This paper introduces a tailored LLM for automating the generation of code snippets from well-structured requirements documents. This LLM is augmented with knowledge, heuristics, and instructions that are pertinent to the software development process, requirements analysis, object-oriented design, and test-driven development, effectively emulating the expertise of a seasoned software engineer. We introduce a "Progressive Prompting" method that allows software engineers to engage with this LLM in a stepwise manner. Through this approach, the LLM incrementally tackles software development tasks by interpreting the provided requirements to extract functional requirements, using these to create object-oriented models, and subsequently generating unit tests and code based on the object-oriented designs. We demonstrate the LLM's proficiency in comprehending intricate user requirements and producing robust design and code solutions through a case study focused on the development of a web project. This study underscores the potential of integrating LLMs into the software development workflow to significantly enhance both efficiency and quality. The tailored LLM is available at https://chat.openai.com/g/g-bahoiKzkB-software-engineer-gpt.