Unlocking the Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Case Study in Software Development

To unlock the potential of GenAI, software developers are facing a key tension. On the one hand, GenAI, as a general-purpose technology, offers vast possibilities for software development. On the other hand, developing software in enterprises requires a deep and nuanced understanding of the existing application landscape. This results in the need to align between GenAI’s algorithmic representation and the developer context. Through an exploratory case study and drawing on the lens of functional affordances, we identify an interplay of two core mechanisms that software developers employ to realize action possibilities of GenAI-assisted software development in the organizational environment: (1) enacting immediate action possibilities, and (2) expanding potential action possibilities. With our study, we contribute to the understanding of GenAI systems as a space of action possibilities, the role of humans to shape these possibilities in recurrent use and design, and how humans collaborate with GenAI.