Principles of Quantitative Development

1.6 TECHNICAL AND BUSINESS ASPECTS OF PLATFORM DESIGN

The technical demands of a trading platform are shared by most large-scale software projects. Among them, those important to quantitative development include maintainability, scalability, modularity, robustness, reliability, security and, of course, performance. While these features may look like the standard principles of software engineering, our own special requirements add a twist to their flavours.

The requirement of maintainability has a special significance in a financial institution, where those who design successful trading systems are in demand because in-house trading systems are a relatively recent phenomenon. They tend to move on to greener pastures, rolling out new trading platforms for other financial institutions. Faced with constant disruption, the maintenance of a trading system is always a challenge. The only way to achieve it is through rigorous documentation. Formal documentation requirements are sure to follow as regulators (both internal and external) start reviewing and auditing custom-built trading platforms, which are becoming more and more commonplace. In the absence of policy-driven guidelines, we have to rely on our own discipline to spend time on self-documenting coding practices and conscientious efforts on documentation and mentoring to ensure continuity and maintainability of our in-house trading system.

Modularity is a fundamental design principle that will aid in achieving scalability as well ...