Description: Product development is variously described as a science, an art, or a philosophy. Six Sigma suffers from the same ambiguity—it is a statistical measure, a business philosophy, a process, a methodology, and a way of living! But by combining the two, we are able to apply structure to creativity and enable product success

Description: On October 30, 2015, the SOA Assumption Development and Governance Group, an informal discussion group consisting of nearly 200 interested actuaries with topics pertaining to actuarial assumption development and governance, organized an industry discussion call on end-to-end assumption documentation practices. The purpose of this call was to generate a large list of ideas for best-practice assumption documentation. More than thirty companies were represented in the call, including direct insurers, reinsurers and consulting firms. This article is the work product of the discussion written by Laurie Li and Alex Zaidlin.