Requirements Engineering with Generative AI: Improving Requirements Development Efficiency with Structured Prompt Technique (SPT)

Software requirements development is a crucial part of the software process. Requirements are among the most important artifacts of software projects. However, requirements development is challenging as requirements are commonly developed in natural language. Hence, automation in the requirements development process was limited until recently. Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) and particularly in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) have created opportunities for software development, especially in areas that involve natural language specifications, such as requirements engineering. In this research, we focus on improving the requirements development efficiency using GenAI and structured prompts. We call this approach the Structured Prompt Technique (SPT). In the software process, the SPT can be used during the requirements development phase after the project vision is defined. For this research, we developed a case study to compare the efficiency that can be achieved in requirements development with 3 different methods: Traditional manual requirements development by humans, automated requirements development with GenAI utilizing conversational prompts, and automated requirements development with GenAI utilizing SPT. For the case study, we developed the requirements for a generic online marketplace application using these 3 different methods. Our research results indicate that we can achieve 8 times improvement in efficiency with automated requirements development with GenAI utilizing conversational prompts, and almost 15 times improvement in efficiency with automated requirements development with GenAI utilizing SPT compared to manual requirements development. Overall, the requirements development with Generative AI has the potential to reduce the traditional manual requirements development process by over $\mathbf{9 0 \%}$. This research shows the significant potential of utilizing GenAI in requirements engineering.