Have you ever thought about McDonald’s life cycle? What stage would you think McDonalds is in right now? The first McDonalds opened in 1940 in California. In the early 1980’s, after three decades of rapid growth, the fast-food market slowly went down and pushed McDonalds to expand abroad. During the 1990’s, McDonald’s expanded their menu offering chicken, pork, salad, milk shakes, soup, and also allowing restaurants to customize their menus to suit the tastes of customers in certain regions. Concerned about the environment, McDonalds began using recyclable paper wrapping and paper napkins.

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal that talks about late night sales for fast-food outlets. According to McDonald’s, their profit increases 11% between the hours starting at midnight to 5 a.m.. Fast-food chains are extending their hours now to serve their late night or early risers to increase sales.

McDonald’s has successfully adapted to changes in the marketplace, innovating new products and services for their customers.  It would appear, McDonald’s falls under the maturity stage of the life cycle and I think McDonald’s will continue to stay at the maturity level for many more decades to come.

Do you think McDonalds life cycle will ever begin to decline? If so, why?

Here’s the link to the article in the Wall Street Journal, you will need to suscribe in order to read the entire article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204577181173570958232.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness

Project planning, scheduling, and controlling are three major components that are most important to a projects success.  I had to learn this the hard way. Over the summer, I was a branch manager of an exterior painting company. I was my own boss and had to manage every aspect of an exterior painting business from finding my own clients, bidding out a job, to scheduling, budgeting, hiring employees, and finally performing the service I was offering to my clients.

 

 My business was growing, I was booking jobs one right after another and my clients were very impressed with all that I had to offer compared to my other competitors. Before beginning work on a house, I would make sure I had all the necessary resources available to complete the job and a detailed work schedule listing out tasks that needed to be completed for each day.  Once work began, things didn’t seem to go according to plan.

 

Some days the weather would delay us from working and when work was being done many of my workers weren’t even completing the tasks I planned on finishing for each day which set us behind as well.  This also meant the more time I spent on a project, the more money I was losing. I tried revising and changing my original plans but they always seemed to fall apart.  At this point, I was losing control and I stopped caring about the budget. As a result, I lost a lot of money (about $3,000) and had some unhappy clients due to not finishing on time. With each project I slowly learned how to take control when things didn’t go as planned and to monitor my budget.  By the end of the summer, I had become better at planning, scheduling, and controlling.

 

 What part of a project management process (planning, scheduling, or controlling) do you think most people struggle with?