Are there any trading desk manager's here who have applied some school of Process Improvement/Project Management to their trading operations? I am looking to map workflow and define a research/implementation cycle etc etc.. I am looking for reference materials: Books, White Papers etc. Please don't tell me Trading for a Living. Thanks.
The underlying principle of Six Sigma is that process variations are randomly distributed. The same assumptions also are applied to price (or return) distributions. However, the processes behind financial markets are much more complex than typical manufacturing processes. Gaussian assumptions in financial markets are less true, and are represented by skew and kurtosis being more prevalent and harder to account for.
Thanks for the input. I was looking more into documentation, workflow mapping and continuous process improvements as defined in the Software Engineering practice. Though this is more for me than anyone. I need to put a lid on trading to focus on school and research. I need a more advanced yet rigid structure mapped out. From a cursory glance it seems, like Six Sigma is based min/max functions found in operations research. I am not looking for an application in trading or products per se and was using SIgma to attract the managerial/process improvement types to my thread.
It has quite a following, but mostly along the lines of cost cutting in the manufacturing industries. I think we once spoke about Van Vilet. I was interested along the lines of what he described as continuous improvement and the development waterfall.
My guess is the very first thing is to identify (according to your insights) what project/problem area you really want to improve/change for significant (estimated) returns against your inputs. 6 sigma (a bundle of tools) is merely an established structural protocol/approach. Just 2 cents. Q https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/paul-west/1a/783/4 • Project Management - Utilised industry-recognised Six Sigma project management methodology to identify and address weaknesses in the client support processes - defined business processes, analysed MIS and introduced process solutions. UQ
I would also think an additional approach to your mapping (of value-chain based workflow) could be using Analytics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytics if you could collect enough data. However, might be too much time-consuming and complex work for you. Another 2 cents. BTW, there are already several books on 6 Sigma for financial services.