Installation of CCTV in McDonalds Fast Food Chains in UK - Essay Example

? Project Management: Tools and Techniques - Installation of CCTV in McDonald’s Fast Food Chains in UK - Number and Number Name of Professor Date of Submission Number of Words: 3,004 Introduction Having established more than 30,000 fast food restaurants all over 121 countries around the world (BBC News, 2001), McDonald’s is considered as one of the largest global foodservice retailers today. Since the era of globalization, there are quite a lot of McDonald’s restaurants all over the world that operates 24/7. For this reason, McDonald’s restaurant has become one of the common places wherein criminal activities can take place. Serving almost 50 million customers each day, Andy Lane – McDonald’s region security manager created the urgency for the need to invest on the installation of closed circuit television system (CCTV) in each of the company-owned restaurants (Dallmeier, 2009). Right after convincing the top management that the use of digital video recorders could effectively protect their staff and customers from becoming a victim of crime, Dallmeier was again awarded the contract to install digital CCTV specifically within the southern regions of the United Kingdom (Sims, 2008). Making it known to the public that McDonald’s is using a digital CCTV that are directed straight to nearby police stations could somehow make people think twice before committing a crime. As of 2011, McDonald’s managed to establish approximately 1,000 fast food restaurant outlets throughout the northern, central, and southern regions of the United Kingdom (Fujitsu, 2011; Sims, 2008). As reported by Sims (2008), approximately 400 McDonald’s restaurants were established in the southern region. Specifically the business relationship between Dallmeier and McDonalds was established way back in 1999. Back then, Dallmeier was able to win the contract for the installation of analogue products in each of McDonalds’ restaurants in southern area (Sims, 2008). Basically, the shift from the use of analogue products to digital products such as digital CCTV was necessary to allow McDonalds gather some digital images which can be use for legal purposes. The study of project management strongly suggests the idea that having a clear planning process could empower the project managers to effectively manage and implement a successful project plan. Considering the importance of installing digital CCTV in each of McDonald’s fast food store outlet throughout the southern part of the United Kingdom, this report will tackle in details rationale behind the need on the part of Dallmeier’s project manager to make use of a SMART metric, power and influence graph, risk exposure, activity network, three-point estimate, and project cash flow over the success of installing CCTV to approximately 400 fast food restaurants in the southern part of the UK market. A SMART Matrix The acronym SMART in a SMART goal matrix means that the project manager of Dallmeier should be able to come up with a project plan that is specific, has a measurable time table or schedule, is very much attainable, realistic and relevant to the installation of digital CCTV, and is within the proposed time bound (Kerzner, 2009: 296). In other words, given that the project manager of Dallmeier would come up with a non-specific and unrealistic project plan, the team members that is being headed by the Dallmeier’s project manager may end up being confused about what they really need to complete within a given project schedule. Coming up with a non-effective project plan may lead to a long-list of installation errors. As a result, there is a huge possibility wherein the cost of installing digital CCTV throughout the 400 McDonalds restaurant outlets throughout the southern part of UK may increase. This is probably due to a lot of unnecessary expenses which includes the installation of a wrong model of digital CCTV in a wrong spot. When this happen, the company may end up spending extra not only for the salary or wages of the team members but also increases the risk wherein the project manager would fail to finish the project within the expected time-frame. It is a common practice on the part of project managers to develop their own SMART goal metric which they can use to communicate what he wants to achieve to the rest of the team members and McDonalds as their customer (Bialek, Duffy, & Moran, 2009: 209 – 210). With this in mind, the following SMART plan will be use for Dallmeier’s project goal includes: (1) install digital CCTV in 400 McDonalds restaurants in southern part of the United Kingdom within less than 1 month; (2) hire competitive temporary workers to install digital CCTV within the first 5 days; (3) avoid overtime by increasing the installation process of each team by 10%; and (4) complete the installation of digital CCTV in 400 McDonalds’ restaurants throughout the southern part of UK within a 3-week window. To ensure that the project manager of Dallmeier will be able to complete the digital CCTV installation throughout the 400 McDonalds restaurants in southern part of UK within less than a month, the project manager should first create 5 teams of 2 who will be assigned to install digital CCTV at least 4 McDonalds restaurant each day. To be able to hire competitive temporary workers for the installation of digital CCTV within the first 5 days, the project manager should first discuss this issue with the company’s top management on August 1, 2011 before publishing the said post on the internet and news report. It is equally essential to increase the installation process of each team by 10% to avoid overtime work. This can be achieved by providing at least 2-day technical training which could make them install digital CCTV within 15 to 20 minutes per restaurant. (Appendix I – SMART Goals Matrix on page 14) Power and Influence Graph The stakeholders of the said project include not only the project manager of Dallmeier, McDonalds as client, and the rest of the team members. Although the team members of a given project has the equal right to contribute ideas on how the entire team could work together towards being able to reach the project goal, the project manager of Dallmeier should somehow have the most authoritative power to influence the rest of the team members to oblige with the guidelines on how the project manager wishes to complete the given project. To be able to do so, Jones and Wicks (1999) mentioned that the project manager of Dallmeier will be able to effectively influence the rest of the team members by first establishing a mutual trust and cooperative working relationship with the rest of the team. With this in mind, trust and cooperative working relationship with the team members can be made possible when the project manager of Dallmeier starts building a two-way communication line with them. As explained by Yulk (1998), the three common types of power includes: (1) position power; (2) personal power; and (3) political power. To effectively create a good working relationship with the rest of the team members, the project manager of Dallmeier should make use of combined position and personal power to allow him to take advantage of his formal authority as the project manager aside from being able to build a good working relationship with the rest of the team using his charisma. Based on the Power and Influence Graph as shown on Appendix II on page 15, it is the project manager who has the highest power and influence when it comes to managing the team members. Although the team members are considered a significant part of making the project successful, the authoritative or positional power that the project manager has legally gives him the power to handle the specific concerns of the team members and McDonald’s as Dallmeier’s client. (See Appendix II – Power and Influence Graph on page 15) Risk Exposure According to Heerkens (2007: 57), “risk and uncertainty are unavoidable in project management”. Although risk and uncertainties are unavoidable, explained that most of these risks are ‘preventable’ (Kerzner, 2009: 791). Therefore, a good project manager should be able to balance not only his ability to show optimism with regards to accomplishing the project goal but also carefully study and identify any potential threats that could make the project a failure. Throughout the project planning, the project manager of Dallmeier should always consider finding ways on how to effectively counteract possible adverse consequences associated with being exposed to risks and uncertainties. Exposure to risks and uncertainties can make the project manager unable to meet their ultimate goal which is to install digital CCTV throughout the 400 McDonalds restaurants in southern UK within less than a month. To effectively decrease the risk of facing uncertainties throughout the proposed 1-month schedule for the installation of digital CCTV throughout the 400 McDonalds restaurants in southern UK, the project manager of Dallmeier should effectively communicate the project deadline and main purpose of this project. By letting the entire team members about the reasons behind the need for immediate installation of digital CCTV throughout the 400 McDonalds restaurants in southern UK, it would be easier on the part of the project manager to win the support of the rest of the team members especially in terms of being able to meet the proposed project schedule. One of the best ways to enable the entire team to meet the project goal, the project manager should come up with a single checklist wherein a list of McDonalds’ restaurant will be assigned to each group (Lock, 2007: 32). Doing so is important in terms of removing risk of bottleneck associated with having a team go directly to a restaurant that has already been served by another team. Furthermore, given that there will be 5 teams of 2 who will be working on this project, it is essential on the part of the project manager to utilize mobile phones as their means of communication. Each week, it would also help if the project manager would meet the group for an hour just to get a feedback about the installation progress and development (Heerkens, 2007: 61 –63). Upon analyzing the entire scenario, the planning stage of a successful project management should not only focus on the main objective of the project plan but also both controllable and uncontrollable risks. Basically, controllable risks include internal project management such as failure to make use of checklist in monitoring where each of the digital CCTV should be installed or travelling to one of McDonald’s restaurant without carrying the necessary equipment needed for the installation of digital CCTV. On the other hand, uncontrollable risks include the presence of natural calamities like typhoon, flood or hurricane and/or the possibility of heavy traffic which could make the team members fail to meet the expected earliest time start of the CCTV installation in the second target restaurant. Activity Network and Three-Point Estimate According to Kerzner (2009: 496), “the primary purpose of network planning is to eliminate the need for crisis management by providing a pictorial representation of the total program”. It means that the use of activity network diagrams are useful project management tools which could enable the project managers immediately come up with useful solutions even before a crisis could arise. With this in mind, the available network scheduling techniques that are commonly use in project management is not limited with the use of a typical Gantt chart or milestone charts but also other techniques like program evaluation and review technique (PERT), or the arrow diagram method (ADM) a.k.a. critical path method (CPM) among others (Kerzner, 2009: 494). Specifically the use of a typical Gantt chart or a milestone chart is not effective in terms of enabling the project managers have a better understanding between interdependent events and activities (Kerzner, 2009: 496). Between the use of PERT and CPM, Kerzner (2009: 516) explained that PERT works best in monitoring event-oriented projects whereas CPM is more useful when monitoring activity-based projects. For this reason, this study will make use of CPM to assist the project manager of Dallmeier have a better control in meeting the project deadline. Within the one-month target, the first week will be intentionally spent in hiring competitive temporary workers to install the digital CCTV (5 days) and provide a 2-day technical training for workers on how they can install digital CCTV within 15 – 20 minutes in each of McDonald’s restaurant. Therefore, the project manager will officially have a maximum of three (3) weeks to install digital CCTV in 400 McDonald’s restaurants. Based on the proposed activity diagram for each of the five (5) teams of two, each team will have to undertake a side survey before they can identify a suitable location for the installation of CCTV. After drawing a specification for the digital CCTV system, the team will have to start securing the system which includes not only the installation of the digital CCTV but also connecting the CCTV to its control system, testing the CCTV system, putting a sign that a CCTV system has been installed within the vicinity of McDonald’s restaurant, and finally enjoy operating the newly installed CCTV. (See Appendix III – Proposed Activity Diagram for Each Team on page 16) According to Heldman (2003), a three-point estimate is actually considered as the simplest version of PERT. In line with this, the process of gathering a three-point estimate is basically computing for three major values which somehow represents the most optimistic (best case), most likely (most likely case), and most pessimistic time (worst case) wherein the proposed project plan will be completed (Goodpasture, 2004: 51). When it comes to the actual installation of digital CCTV, each of the team members have different levels with regards to their professional experiences to complete the required task. In line with this, the following tasks will have to be satisfied prior to the completion of each installation: Task ‘A’ – requires the team members to undertake side survey. Task ‘B’ – identify specific location where they should install a digital CCTV. Task ‘C’ – draw-up specifications for the CCTV system. Task ‘D’ – secure the system. Task ‘E’ – install the digital CCTV. Task ‘F’ – connect the CCTV to a control system. Task ‘G’ – test the CCTV system. Task ‘H’ – put signs a digital CCTV has been installed in the restaurant. Since each team of two have different capability of completing task ‘A’ to ‘H’, determining the most optimistic, most likely, and most pessimistic time wherein a given task can be completed is important on the part of the project manager. With this in mind, the official formula to use to compute for a simple average three-point estimate is represented below: Simple Average Three-Point Estimate = [(optimistic + most likely + pessimistic) / 3] For example: Considering the technical expertise of the team members, task ‘A’ as shown in Appendix III – Proposed Activity Diagram for Each Team on page 16 clearly states the need to “undertake side survey”, the optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic time schedule to complete the said task would be 10, 7, and 12 minutes respectively. Using these estimates, it means that three-point estimate wherein task ‘A’ would be completed would be 9.67 minutes [(10 + 7 + 12) / 3] and so on. (See Appendix IV – Simple Average Three-Point Estimate in the Activity Diagram for Each Team on page 17) Based on the estimated figures as presented on Appendix III, the average three-point estimate to enable Dallmeier’s team of two to complete the installation of digital CCTV in one of McDonald’s restaurant is 1 hour and 33 seconds or 60.33 minutes (9.67 + 5.33 + 6.00 + 8.00 + 15.33 + 7.67 + 5.33 + 3). Considering the normal working hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work schedule, it is possible for each team to be able to install at least 4 digital CCTV in 4 McDonald restaurants each day. With regards to the best case, the earliest time wherein each team will be able to successfully install a digital CCTV in one of McDonald’s restaurant will be almost an hour or 57 minutes (10 + 4 + 5 + 8 + 15 + 8 + 4 + 3). On the other hand, in case controllable or uncontrollable risks arises, the worst case scenario wherein each team will be able to successfully install a digital CCTV in one of McDonald’s restaurant will be 1 hour and 16 minutes or 76 minutes (12 + 7 + 9 + 9 + 19 + 9 + 7 + 4). (See Appendix IV – Simple Average Three-Point Estimate in the Activity Diagram for Each Team on page 17) Aside from going through the process of computing for a simple average three-point estimate, the project manager of Dallmeier can also make use of a three-point weighted average by using the formula below: Three-Point Weighted Average = {[optimistic + 4 (most likely) + pessimistic] / 6} Using the three-point weighted average as presented on Appendix IV, the estimated time wherein Dallmeier’s team of two could complete the installation of digital CCTV in one of McDonald’s restaurant is 53.50 minutes (8.33 + 5.17 + 5.00 + 7.50 + 13.00 + 6.83 + 5.17 + 2.50). This particular three-point weighted average suggest that the team could complete task ‘A’ to ‘H’ even 6.83 minutes (60.33 minutes – 53.50 minutes) faster as compared to the use of a simple three-point estimate formula. (See Appendix V –Three-Point Estimate Weighted in the Activity Diagram for Each Team on page 18) Project Cash Flow Each project normally has a limited budget. For this reason, project managers should be able to come up with an accurate cash flow projection (Gido & Clements, 2009: 283). By considering the estimated cost of labour, charges for the needed materials, transportation costs (i.e. gas, toll fee, etc.), food allowances, etc., the project manager would know roughly how much to charge McDonalds as the client so that the company would end-up earning some profit at the end of the said project. Conclusion A careful planning before starting a project is essential part of having a successful project management. To ensure the success of this project, the project manager of Dallmeier should be familiar with the use of project management tools like a SMART metric, power and influence graph, risk exposure, activity network, three-point estimate, and project cash flow. *** End *** Appendix I – SMART Goals Matrix Task / Objective S M A R T Install digital CCTV in 400 McDonalds restaurants in southern UK within less than 1 month X X X - Create 5 teams of 2 for the installation. 1 month Hire competitive temporary workers to install digital CCTV within the first 5 days X X Discuss issue with top management on August 1, 2011. - Publish available job post on internet and news report. 5 days Avoid overtime by increasing the installation process of each team by 10%. X X X - Train workers to install digital CCTV within 15 – 20 minutes per store outlet. 2 days Complete the installation of digital CCTV in 400 McDonalds’ restaurants throughout the southern part of UK within a 3-week window. X X X X (Steps as shown in Appendix II) 3 weeks Specific Measurable Attainable Resources Time Appendix II – Power and Influence Graph Appendix III – Proposed Activity Diagram for Each Team Appendix IV – Simple Average Three-Point Estimate in the Activity Diagram for Each Team Appendix V –Three-Point Estimate Weighted in the Activity Diagram for Each Team References BBC News. (2001, December 20). McDonald's takes on Asterix. [Available online]: accessed 31 August 2011. Bialek, R., Duffy, G., & Moran, J. (2009). The Public Health Quality Improvement Handbook. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press. Dallmeier. (2009). Secure CCTV protects McDonalds and its neighbours. [Available online]: accessed 31 August 2011. Fujitsu. (2011, August 2). McDonald’s Serves up New IT Support Contract to Fujitsu. Five-year deal to support 1,200 restaurants across the UK and Republic of Ireland. [Available online]: accessed 31 August 2011. Gido, J., & Clements, J. (2009). Successful Project Management. OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Goodpasture, J. (2004). Quantitative methods in project management. J. Ross Publishing Inc. Heerkens, G. (2007). Project Management: 24 Steps to Help You Master Any Project. NY: McGraw-Hill Companies. Heldman, K. (2003). Project Management JumpStart. 1st Edition. Jossey-Bass. Jones, T., & Wicks, A. (1999). Convergent Stakeholder Theory. Academy of Management Review , 24(2), 206-221. Kerzner, H. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. 10th Edition. John Wiley & Sons. Lock, D. (2007). Project management. 9th Edition. Hampshire: Gower Publishing Ltd. Sims, B. (2008, March 22). info4 Security. Secure CCTV protects McDonald's Restaurants. [Available online]: accessed 31 August 2011. Yukl, G. (1998). Leadership in organization. Sydney: Prentice-Hall. Read More