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2.21. Product Team
A cross-functional business team includes all the people who will be associated with the
trading/investment system design and development project: financial engineers, traders
or portfolio managers, programmers, and marketing personnel. The product team may
require one or several people from each of these groups to work together daily until the
project is completed.2.22. Quality
ISO 9000 clause 3.1.1 defines quality as the “ degree to which a set of inherent character-
istics fulfills requirements. ” That definition is a bit abstract because in the end quality can
only be defined by the customer. Nevertheless, we can talk about aspects of quality, such
as fitness for use, and meeting or exceeding customer requirements and expectations. We
can also discuss quality characteristics such as waiting time, safety, reliability, security,
responsiveness, competence, dependability, accuracy, and effectiveness of communica-
tions. Whatever quality characteristics are important to customers should be mea sured,
monitored, and analyzed to identify areas for improvement.
ISO also defines a quality management system as a “ management system to direct and
control an organization with regard to quality. ” Quality management principles include:● Customer focus.
● Leadership.
● Involvement of employees.
● Process approach.
● System approach to management.
● Continuous improvement.
● Factual approach to decision making.
● Mutually beneficial vendor relationships.Over the course of this book, when using the term quality we mean to include quality
itself as well as the quality-related disciplines Six Sigma and Lean.2.23. Quality Money Management
Quality Money Management (QMM) is composed of all the procedures for develop-
ment, research, testing, implementation, and management of trading/investment systems,
including delineation of responsibility, all deliberately aimed at achieving performance
levels consistent with or above the objectives of seed capital providers and investors. This
is not a onetime effort. QMM requires ongoing commitment to improve continuously the
systems of trade selection, execution, risk management, and all other trading/investment
system processes and the performance of statistical process control on risk attributes.
When these procedures are taken together, they define how management of the trading/
investment organization operates.2.23. QUALITY MONEY MANAGEMENT