The Chapter has been bustling with activity the last month with lots of great events. We have an exciting new event planned for the end of March hosted by the Business Analysis (BA) Community. You won’t want to miss this event so watch for it on our Events Calendar. The BA Community has been successfully holding events and bringing more visibility to its community. The team is continuously coming up with great ideas for events and blog content. This month we are proud to present the BA Community’s Chairperson, Soyini Francis as our featured Member of the Month. Soyini is always coming up with brilliant ideas with her portfolio partners and co-volunteers. She also contributed to our PMIT blog with her feature, Reintroducing the Business Analyst Role to Project Teams. Soyini has been nominated by Michael Becker for her dedication and hard work.

The Path from BA to PMP

Soyini Francis first started her career as a programmer before moving onto the role of a Business Analyst. With a MSc in Computer Science, she has made great professional strides over the years and worked in multiple industries including insurance, electric utilities, both in the public and government sectors. Earning her PMP certification in 2011 she was primarily working on software implementation. Her career continues to flourish with projects in her repertoire from “system enhancements to new product development, green field implementations to those with heavy data migration components.” Now she is an IT Manager for Enterprise Analytics and Data managing both teams and projects. Soyini offers this as one of her lessons learned to other project management professionals:

Don’t lose sight of the goal the project is intended to achieve and recognize when good enough is good enough.

As she studied for her PMP certification she recalls how rewarding it was to learn the concepts she hadn’t yet been using professionally. She says how learning project management concepts was exciting since she had not yet had those experiences in her career up to that point. The skills she learned in preparation for her PMP gave her the confidence to take them into her work life. Project management allowed Soyini to bid for projects which gave her an “edge over uncertified Project Managers.”

A Volunteer, A Leader

After joining the Chapter in 2019, Soyini wanted to contribute more to PMIT so she started volunteering in 2020. The pandemic gave her an opportunity to fit volunteering into her busy schedule since we were not working in a virtual environment. She explains why she decided to be a volunteer:

I wanted to become more involved in a professional-based organization and having attended in-person Chapter events previously and participating on an ad hoc basis in community meetings I wanted to give more during this period.

Serving as Chairperson of the BA Community she leads a “committed group of volunteers who are interested in and passionate about the Business Analysis field.” Together they share their knowledge on the role and the benefits of business analysis for project teams. They continue to enrich Chapter members in knowing more about their work and this field.

More About Soyini

Soyini is a valued member of PMI Toronto and her contributions have been recognized since she began as a member. She describes herself as someone who believes in progress over perfection. This is something we can all learn from as project management professionals as well. She continues to work with her team to bring new BA events to PMIT. When asked how she defines success, she offers:

Balance, freedom, and peace of mind. Success for me is found in the process of thorough preparation and delivery, then the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve given my best and the clients/customers have received value through my efforts.

Favourite Quote: This too shall pass.

Work Passions: Learning something new. I like the process of embracing uncertainty in a new project/field, growing with individuals that become a team and working our way through to successful delivery.

Personal Passions: I enjoy reading fiction and spending quality time with my family.

 

Nominate a Fellow PMIT Member

We are always looking for ways to showcase our dedicated and invaluable members and volunteers. Take some time and nominate a fellow PMI Toronto Chapter member to be featured in our Member of the Month series. Please send your nomination suggestions to communications@pmitoronto.ca and tell us why the member should be featured.