Quickly Scope and Plan App Projects with ChatGPT for Agencies

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Defining the Core Features
• Creating User Stories
• Developing Initial Wireframes
• Rethinking the Solution Creatively
• Simplifying and Removing Features
• Revising the Wireframes
• Defining the UI Elements
• Choosing the Tech Stack
• Writing Detailed Requirements
• Managing Project Risks
• Considering Legal and Compliance
• Creating a Budget and Timeline
• Finalizing Requirements
• Conclusion

Introduction: Scoping a New App Project with ChatGPT

Developing a new app from initial concept to launch is an extensive process that involves clearly defining the scope, features, design, development requirements and more. Traditionally, this requires countless meetings and workshops between clients, project managers, designers and developers to align on the vision.

This back-and-forth can delay projects for weeks or months. However, new AI tools like ChatGPT provide an opportunity to dramatically accelerate the scoping process.

The Challenge of Scoping Projects

When starting a new app build, agencies typically face a dilemma. Clients come to them with an idea, but to provide an accurate estimate, the agency needs to comprehensively scope out the features and requirements first. This requires long working sessions and alignment to define the initial MVP. Only then can the team estimate the effort and provide a quote. This delays kicking off development for weeks.

A Faster Way with ChatGPT

New conversational AI tools like ChatGPT allow app builders to scope projects in a fraction of the time. Rather than days of back-and-forth, ChatGPT can help define features, user stories, wireframes and technical specifications in minutes. The output provides a strong starting point for the team to iterate on, instead of starting from scratch. This significantly accelerates planning to get to development faster.

Defining the Core Features

One of the most critical scoping activities is aligning on the core features and functionality of the app. This helps focus on building an MVP that delivers the most essential user value.

With ChatGPT, we can quickly define the must-have and nice-to-have features based on the initial concept, rather than this taking days of discussion.

Must-Have Features

For our event marketplace app idea, ChatGPT defined the must-have features as:

• User registration and profiles
• Event discovery and browsing
• Event creation and management
• Ticket purchases and payments
• Ratings and reviews

Nice-to-Have Features

Meanwhile, the nice-to-have features were listed as:

• Social sharing capabilities
• Push notifications
• Chat support
• Analytics dashboard

Creating User Stories

With the core features defined, we can start creating user stories to map end-user functionality in more detail. This helps ensure we build an optimal user experience.

ChatGPT quickly drafted user stories for our major app features such as:

Core User Journeys

• As an event creator, I want to easily build event listings so I can monetize my classes and activities.
• As a user, I want to discover relevant events so I can find activities that interest me.
• As an attendee, I want to securely pay for event tickets so I can register for events I like.

Developing Initial Wireframes

Wireframing is essential for visualizing the app user flows and interface. With the help of the Whimsical plugin, ChatGPT can rapidly generate initial wireframes for feedback.

For our marketplace concept, ChatGPT produced wireframes spanning:

• Homepage and discovery

• Event listings

• User profiles

• Event creation and management

• Ticket checkout.

Visualizing the MVP

In just minutes, we have clickable lo-fi wireframes conveying the core screens and journeys for validating the MVP product concept. This provides an excellent starting point for iteration.

Rethinking the Solution Creatively

AI like ChatGPT tends to provide logical but somewhat vanilla solutions. We challenged it to re-approach our event concept in unconventional ways to spark new ideas.

ChatGPT proposed innovative features like:

• VR previews of event spaces

• Voice-activated event search

• Personalized recommendations

• AR-enhanced event experiences.

Unconventional Features

While too advanced for our initial MVP, this exercise produced creative ideas to consider in future releases. The AI brought novel perspectives we likely wouldn't have thought of initially.

Simplifying and Removing Features

To keep our MVP simple and focused on the core value proposition, we tasked ChatGPT with analyzing the solution to cut nonessential features.

It recommended removing or postponing:

• Admin analytics dashboard

• Push notifications

• Community forums

• Chat support.

Focusing on the Core

Restricting features to the absolute must-haves ensures we build a streamlined v1 focused on validated user needs, not unnecessary bloat.

Revising the Wireframes

With a simplified feature set, we had ChatGPT update the wireframes to reflect the focused MVP.

This produced clean, concise user flows centered on the core functionality.

Finalizing the MVP Flows

The revised wireframes provide an excellent framework for conveying the finalized interaction design and user journeys to the development team.

Defining the UI Elements

We used ChatGPT to catalog all interface elements like buttons, text, controls and more needed to bring the wireframes to life.

This included detailing elements such as:

• Search bars

• Filter toggles

• Event cards

• Registration forms

• Payment forms.

Buttons, Text, Images

This UI inventory will assist designers and developers in implementing the visual and interactive components of the product.

Choosing the Tech Stack

We consulted ChatGPT on recommending an optimal technology stack for building the app given the defined requirements.

It suggested:

• React Native for cross-platform mobile

• Node.js and Express for the backend

• MongoDB for storage.

Frontend, Backend, Database

This combination of proven technologies should deliver a robust, scalable platform for launching the MVP.

Writing Detailed Requirements

With UX design and technical stack aligned, we used ChatGPT to produce detailed functional and non-functional requirements.

These included:

• Mobile responsiveness

• Load time performance

• Security protocols

• Scalability benchmarks.

Functional and Non-Functional

These requirements provide the development team with specifications to build and test against when implementing the product.

Managing Project Risks

We also leveraged ChatGPT to assess project risks based on the proposed design, features and technologies chosen.

It highlighted risks like:

• Slow adoption requiring increased marketing

• Scaling servers with user growth

• Potential for bugs on unsupported mobile devices.

Mitigation Strategies

Knowing these risks upfront allows us to proactively prepare mitigation strategies to address issues before they arise.

Considering Legal and Compliance

We prompted ChatGPT to outline legal and compliance considerations for our event marketplace.

Key items included:

• Terms of service and privacy policies for users

• PCI compliance for processing payments

• Copyright policies for event content

• Insurance coverage.

Data Privacy, Licensing

This analysis highlighted important legal aspects to review with our legal counsel to protect users and mitigate liability.

Creating a Budget and Timeline

A detailed project timeline and budget provides guidance for planning the development sprints.

ChatGPT proposed:

• 5 sprints of 2 weeks each

• $50k for development

• $10k for design

• $10k for marketing

• Launching after 5 months.

Development, Marketing, Launch

This timeline and budget estimate allows us to assemble the team and schedule resources to hit our target launch date.

Finalizing Requirements

With a thorough initial scope and specs defined, we can compile all details into a requirements document for signoff.

This aligns all stakeholders on the vision before kicking off development.

Client Sign-off

A comprehensive requirements doc allows the client to validate we are aligned on delivering the right solution before starting build sprints.

Conclusion

Using ChatGPT, we rapidly scoped a new event marketplace app from concept to launch in far less time than traditional planning methods.

The AI produced actionable deliverables to align our team on bringing the MVP to market.

Next Steps for Development

With the core functionality, design framework, and technical specifications completed, we can now start executing focused development sprints to build our minimum viable product.

FAQ

Q: How can ChatGPT help agencies scope projects faster?
A: ChatGPT can quickly generate core features, user stories, wireframes, requirements, and other key scoping documents that would normally require lengthy workshops.

Q: What is the benefit of fast scoping for agencies?
A: Faster scoping allows agencies to rapidly estimate costs and resources needed for development, improving the quoting process.

Q: How accurate are ChatGPT's project scoping suggestions?
A: ChatGPT provides a strong starting point, but agencies should still review and refine the AI's recommendations collaboratively with clients.

Q: Can ChatGPT handle complex or large scale projects?
A: For simpler MVPs and web/mobile apps ChatGPT performs well, but very complex enterprise projects may require more nuanced human scoping.

Q: What tools does ChatGPT use for scoping?
A: Plugins like Whimsical allow ChatGPT to generate wireframes and diagrams. Prompt engineering provides guardrails.

Q: How can agencies integrate ChatGPT into their workflows?
A: Use ChatGPT to accelerate internal planning and ideation, then collaborate with clients to refine and finalize scope.

Q: Does AI replace human strategic input in scoping?
A: No, ChatGPT should augment an agency's expertise. Human guidance is still needed to validate the AI's suggestions.

Q: What are the limitations of ChatGPT for project scoping?
A: ChatGPT can lack nuanced industry and domain knowledge. Always sanity check its recommendations.

Q: How can agencies get started with using ChatGPT for scoping?
A: Start with a simple prompt template focused on an MVP. Iterate and refine prompts based on project needs.

Q: What benefits beyond scoping can ChatGPT provide agencies?
A: Ideation, competitor research, marketing copy, staff training, customer support, and more.