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In this edition of the PMICIE Member User Story, we feature Bill Parris, PMICIE President. 

As a volunteer with PMI, I get the opportunity to…

Serve in a variety of volunteer roles, including that of past and current President of PMICIE. As President over the past four years, I have been responsible as an informal and formal liaison to PMI Global, Region 7, and the Leadership Institute Meeting (LIM). 

I also serve internationally as Coach for the English Academy for Project Management in Lima, Peru. As President of PMICIE, I have been aligning the PMICIE By-Laws with PMI Global’s updated requirements, and working with the Board on 2021 Strategic Objectives and Services as requested by PMI Global and PMICIE members.

As a Board member, what I love most is…

That's a tough question to answer, since there are so many things I love about being a part of PMICIE leadership. If I had to pick one thing I love most, I'd have to say it's the people.  Every day, I have the opportunity to interact with a group of volunteers selflessly dedicated to our membership and advancing our profession. I've been privileged to talk with most of our members and get to see how the chapter has improved their careers and lives. I like to think that our work as a Board has contributed to our members’ successes; it's certainly helped me personally. 

Volunteering for the Board has expanded my professional network and my understanding of project management enormously, leading to several promotions at work. 

As a person living in this age of the pandemic, my most challenging aspect this year has been…  

The necessary shift to virtual work. I am a people-person and enjoy interacting with my colleagues, so it's been hard to adjust to live video vs. sitting in the same room. I am grateful for the ability to work from home and feel fortunate that virtual meeting platforms were mostly ready to take up the challenge of virtual work in the pandemic. 

As a project manager, I am most rewarded in my work when I…

Help people to be their best and harness their efforts towards a common goal; this has always been a passion of mine and that is exactly what project management is to me.  When I discovered there was an actual profession focused on people and accomplishing goals, I was hooked. 20+ years later, I'm the manager of the Enterprise Technology Program Management Office for SANDAG.

As a person who wishes to share a fun fact, I want to express that…

I belong to and actively volunteer with four chapters: San Diego, Inland Empire, Rio Grande, and Lima, Peru. Volunteering with PMI has been an incredible experience that has really opened my eyes to how our profession is truly global. I've had the opportunity to meet amazing people who are truly thought leaders and have taught me so much through my Chapter service. 

In addition to my day job as the PMO manager for SANDAG, I am also the personal servant to a sassy fourteen-year old Chihuahua and two eleven-year old Dachshunds, who prove to me on a daily basis that a sense of humor is absolutely critical.

by Gil Broza - June 12, 2017

In my courses, I use various activities to examine and drive home agile’s many principles. Ones that usually trigger deep conversations include getting to “done,” feedback, collaboration, and effectiveness before efficiency. Many senior managers attend my courses, and almost every time, one of them will ask: “Aren’t these principles just a common-sense way to work?”

I often hear the sentiment applied to popular agile practices, too. For instance, doesn’t it make sense to demo finished work to stakeholders? Meet your teammates every day for micro-planning? Capture work items from the perspective of the customer and process them in descending order of value?

If all this is indeed common sense, why has much of the world of work—at least the work of software development—operated differently in the last several decades? In fact, why hasn’t the new “sensible” approach displaced the previous approach completely?