In the modern Product Engineering environment, software is integrated earlier into the development cycle, more so than ever before; we are entering the cyber-physical age. Companies try to adopt agile principles, but they must be aligned with a regulatory environment that is itself evolving. Many existing processes and expertise become irrelevant or need to be substantially modified when software is an integral part of the system a company is building.

That's where QRA Corp, a requirements analysis and compliance solutions provider, comes into the picture. Based on extensive research, QRA has found that the root causes of over 50% of defects identified in projects are introduced in the requirements phase. These findings led to the development of its requirements analysis software, QVscribe.

With QVscribe, businesses can identify risks, errors, and ambiguities in the earliest stages of a project, saving rework, cost overruns, and recalls. The solution help teams automate the quality of written requirements, capturing the correct data in the most compliant manner. "It's not just about compliance, adherence, but also having a shared understanding between all the stakeholders of what it is you're trying to build at a very technical level," explains Jordan Kyriakidis, Ph.D., Co-Founder, and CEO, of QRA Corp.

QVscribe is an innovative solution that analyzes requirements and alerts authors of ambiguous, overly complex, and fundamentally malformed engineering requirements. There are common characteristics in every guideline and ruleset for requirements writing. A precise and compliant requirement is unitary, complete, verifiable, unambiguous, and consistent with other requirements in the set. QVscribe leverages these common principles to establish an immediate and repeatable requirement writing process. The development teams and stakeholders can ensure everyone is aligned on the desired project outcomes. "At the requirements stage, when they're writing down the type of system they want to build and what properties the system should have, that is where QVscribe really shines. We provide a simple score from one to five for each requirement; it offers better clarity for a seamless development experience," adds Kyriakidis.

Analyzing Requirements are the Key
QVscribe improves the effectiveness of writing requirements by applying industry best practices and an organization’s individual requirements standards. It is integrated with common requirements management platforms in use today, such as Siemens' Polarion, IBM’s DOORS Next, Jama, and Microsoft Word and Excel. With QVscribe, businesses decrease tedious and monotonous tasks and focus on value – intent, not syntax. Moreover, QVscribe is an automated tool whose utility is understood in seconds: no unfamiliar UI that uses a task-based, not a feature-based, workflow. The solution uses a proprietary Natural Language Processing algorithms developed from years of research to solve issues successfully. “. “We use a combination of technologies such as AI, natural language processing, and the INCOSE ruleset for writing requirements to solve the actual problem,” says Kyriadkidis.

QVscribe is the fastest way to edit requirements documents by turning syntactic weaknesses into strengths using a visual grading system powered by Natural Language Processing, INCOSE rules for writing requirements, and EARS (the Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax). In addition, with industry best practices and configurations, QVscribe measures the quality and consistency of the exact requirements. A responsive, just-in-time analysis ensures compliance, identifies requirements problems, and removes them at the source. “We analyze the actual text with a shared understanding. It is also about making sure that everyone is aware of what's going on, without having meeting, after meeting, after meeting,” explains Kyriakidis.

Inceptions and Innovations
Since the company’s inception, QRA has received over $12 million in financing and funding from Innovacorp, Lockheed Martin, Newfund Capital, BDC, and the Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia. Utilizing these funds, the company has sharpened its focus on continuous technology development and the product development of QVscribe, increasing its market share and thought leadership amongst various industries. QRA’s approach has allowed them to double its annual recurring revenue over each of the past three years.A vital aspect of QRA is its dedication to creation. This has been recognized with Jordan Kyriakidis’ nomination for the 2019 Manning Innovation Awards, as well as his invitation as a member of the Government of Canada’s Advisory Council in Artificial Intelligence.

Looking to the future
As we enter the fourth industrial revolution with technological advancements, robotics, genetic engineering, and quantum computing, we are in a new era integrating communication with automated practices and traditional methods. QRA works intimately with its top-tier customers to discover barriers and pain points, and to develop customer success plans that work for them. Currently focused primarily on the Medical Device, Energy, Semiconductor, and Automotive sectors, QRA is poised to supplement its existing solutions by providing more vertically integrated capabilities to better assist its customers with problems they are asking for.

“Our recommendations report to each organization outlines the action plan that ultimately helps achieve organizational goals. By providing value to our customers with every interaction, either through QVscribe or via direct guidance through our Customer Success Program, we can evolve with our customers to help them grow and achieve their goals. By generating valuable and actionable metadata from the artifacts they already produce, we can ensure we deliver the right information, to the right person, at the right time,” concludes Kyriakidis.