7.3.2 Assignment – Integrated Project Plan Recently I was assigned to a project team comprised of four members to develop a new product or service that would help increase my employer’s product portfolio and create more net revenue for the company. With the directives given, we met and decided to brainstorm over the weekend for possible ideas. This past weekend I was bass fishing in my local lake and saw a man
standing on a five-gallon bucket on the front of his bass boat. This time of year, the largemouth bass move into the shallows to make beds for spawning. Sight fishing for these spawning areas or beds is an exciting style of bass fishing and the extra height was his tactical approach for seeing more fish beds. The key concept here is sight fishing. Bass boats are built to be low to the water line to allow for the best casting positions to hit banks and vegetation along the shoreline. Being low to the water makes sight fishing difficult due to the low angle and water reflections. Saltwater bay boats have entertained casting platforms and polling platforms for sight fishing in coastal flats for many years and work well as permanent fixtures. The five-gallon bucket was an awesome idea but ideally unsafe as loss of balance could result in damage to fishing equipment, bodily injury, and possibly even death by drowning. With this concept of a casting/sight fishing platform on a bass boat, certain provisions would have to be addressed to make a product beneficial to bass fishermen as spawning season lasts for only four to six weeks and would hinder normal fishing practices if permanently mounted. Myself and the three other project teammates met the following Monday and discussed our ideas for new products. It was unanimously decided that the idea of a deck platform for bass boats could be easily produced, be profitable, and easily marketed if there was in fact a market that would be verified before production. The project scope is to develop and produce a casting platform boat accessory built specifically for bass boats and sight fishing. This is not a new invention, but a new concept and product specifically for bass boats. This is an accessory that from current research is not available for bass boats. The goal is to produce a lightweight, and easily removable platform specifically built for bass boats that produce the same results as the five-gallon bucket but safer. The product would come in a 12-inch tall one step version and an 18-inch tall two step version. Both options would be sixteen inches wide and twelve inches deep on the top step. Two choices for mounting would be two permanent mounted base pads and two rubber feet, or a second option of 4 rubber feet. Both styles will be universal and up to customer discretion for mounting. The sales goal is to sell the product to one-third of the estimated 143,000 bass boats sold annually (BASS, Jan 2021), which at a net profit of $125 each would be roughly 6 million dollars. These numbers do not account for the estimated 60 million bass fisherman around the world (ESPN, August 2001) who may purchase the platform as an accessory for their used boat. An Agile Management approach will be used. Immediate data collection of cost and customer response is critical to the implementation of the project (two months max). Prototypes will be built and tested within those two months and a production plan will be established. Departments will coordinate with each other to modify materials, design, and cost based on environmental, customer and stakeholder requests or suggestions. All components of the project should be identified and integrated into the overall project management plan to ensure that each area is working consistently (Arnold, 2022). 2
