Assignment: Project Motorcycles

You are a project manager for a medium-sized manufacturer of motorcycle cruisers. The engines in motorcycle cruisers, like the ones you manufacture, are usually categorized by size rather than the number of cylinders. In the past, your company has successfully manufactured and marketed the best-selling of these fuel-efficient cruisers that occupy the middleweight class. The rather nebulous middleweight class comprises motorcycles broadly ranging in engine size from 500 cubic centimeters, or cc, to 1000 cc.

Executives at your company are now interested in motorcycles with larger motors and would eventually like to produce motorcycles in the touring class, specifically designed to excel at covering long distances with motors larger than 1100 cc. The proposed target market for these larger motorcycles consists of males between the ages of 35 and 60 in global markets. Price points for the larger motorcycles cover income ranges from $55,000 to $100,000. Management has decided that your company will meet the objectives stated herein within the next five (5) years. During the proposed changeover, the company will continue to manufacture the middleweight cruisers to serve its existing clientele.

Write a six to eight page paper in which you:

1. Select one of the types of project organization that would suit the development of the larger touring class motorcycles. Outline the process steps that your company would take in order to develop the motorcycle. Provide a rationale for the response.

2. Recommend one strategy to the senior executives that the organization might use to balance short- and long-term needs. Specify the crucial resources that you would need as a project manager to run the existing business interests at the same time that the business changes to the production of touring class motorcycles.

3. Suggest the project management leadership style that is most conducive to overseeing the operation of the business growth plan.

4. Recommend at least three risk mitigation strategies to address project plan details that might be forgotten or overlooked. Justify the selection.

5. Use at least three quality references. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not quality as academic resources.