In an innovative step for the IT industry, Kikuvi Inc., based in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, and ROUTE06 Inc., located in Chiyoda, Tokyo, have announced their collaboration to enhance the requirement definition process through advanced AI technologies. This partnership integrates Kikuvi’s Conversational AI-based requirement-gathering agent with ROUTE06’s requirement definition AI, Acsim, promising to transform how businesses collect and structure requirements.
The Problem with Traditional Requirement Definition
Japan’s requirement definition market is enormous, valued at approximately 5 trillion yen. Despite this, the process remains heavily reliant on human expertise, with accuracy significantly influenced by the individual carrying out the task. Thus, the initial stage, often termed “on-site hearing,” plays a critical role in establishing project success. The capacity to correctly extract voices from the field and convert them into structured requirements demands high comprehension and organizational skills. This dependency on human factors has led to inconsistencies in quality, speed, and reproducibility, creating chronic issues that can lead to miscommunications and increased costs later in the development process.
Innovative Solution through Collaboration
Recognizing these challenges, Kikuvi and ROUTE06 have joined forces to deliver a streamlined solution. By connecting their respective technologies, they eliminate bottlenecks in on-site hearings and subsequent requirement definitions. Kikuvi automates the process of question generation based on the given themes or objectives, gathering feedback asynchronously from respondents. The gathered data is then summarized and classified into structured formats, allowing for a more efficient extraction of critical insights.
Upon receiving the structured data generated by Kikuvi, Acsim steps in to facilitate further steps, including identifying issues, proposing solutions, and streamlining the approval process, thereby ensuring that everyone involved can achieve a consistent quality of work. This partnership aims to eradicate the personalization of requirement gathering, thereby improving the overall quality, speed, and reproducibility of requirement definitions.
Future Developments
Looking ahead, Kikuvi and ROUTE06 plan to initiate collaborative Proof of Concept (PoC) projects and corporate onboarding support programs by the end of 2025. They aim to optimize hearing models and requirement definition patterns tailored to various industry specifics, aiming to democratize high-quality requirement definitions across teams. Additionally, the integration of their services seeks to enable process automation, including automatic analysis of hearing results, improvement proposals, and the generation of requirement quality scores, ultimately establishing a new standard model for requirement definitions.
Leadership Perspectives
Sato Kento, CEO of Kikuvi: He emphasized that the hearing phase in requirement definition is not only critical but also the most personalized. By mechanizing the hearing process through AI, Kikuvi aspires to create an environment where everyone can efficiently extract insights from respondents. Through the collaboration with Acsim, valuable qualitative insights gathered during hearings can be directly utilized in requirement definitions, facilitating uninterrupted knowledge flow.
Endo Takafumi, Executive Officer at ROUTE06: He noted the importance of accurate understanding from the field. By integrating Kikuvi’s hearing technology with Acsim’s capabilities, they can structure feedback in a replicable manner, significantly enhancing project success rates. This initiative is set to eliminate inefficiencies in the development process while fostering an environment where every development team can move projects forward effortlessly.
About Kikuvi
Kikuvi is an AI hearing agent that automates the entire process of designing questions, conducting hearings, and structuring data. With its ability to redefine traditional hearing processes through in-depth AI questioning and analytical prowess, Kikuvi transforms insights gathered from conversations into structured business knowledge. It enables organizations to conduct fast, large-scale, and unbiased hearings, significantly enhancing knowledge utilization and improvement speeds across the board.
Website:
Kikuvi
About Acsim
Acsim is a generative AI platform designed to reinforce and complement the thought processes of requirement definers, democratizing the skill of requirement definition. It consistently assists in various processes essential for requirement definition, ensuring quality outputs that enhance decision-making precision and speed.
Website:
Acsim
About ROUTE06
ROUTE06 is a startup redefining product development through collaboration between humans and AI. Offering platforms like Acsim, which aids in requirement design, and others for database design and AI agent development, ROUTE06 addresses all phases of design, implementation, and operation to enhance the speed and quality of development projects.
Website:
ROUTE06