(Image source: US Embassy & Consulate in Canada) I recently left the US to move back to Canada. In this article, I share my thoughts and reasoning on this move. I came to the US at the end of 2019 on an H1B visa, which I got on my 3rd attempt towards the H1B “lottery”….
Author: Ellery
Transcending storytelling
As a PM, I always see storytelling as one of the most important communication tools. Whether I am trying to get buy-in, build alignment, explain a strategy or share my learning, stories are usually a powerful way to retain attention and elicit empathy. But as I keep practicing storytelling, I am gradually realizing that as…
Diagnose before Prescribe: A lesson in empathetic customer listening
A few weeks ago, a customer told me that my product is so good that he plans to stop using it. A bit of context here: As you may know from my blog, I am the product owner of a wiki-as-a-service documentation web app at Microsoft. Our service offers multiple managed wiki sites to various…
WFH, self-sustainability and P/PC balance
As we enter an extended WFH (Work From Home) period of time, I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of self-sustainability. Self-sustainability, a sense of confidence in leading an effective life completely by myself, relies on something called P/PC balance. In this article, I share some learning about these concepts from the past month of…
Fuzzier language, better UX
This is a story of a customer psychology analysis. It led me to choose less precise language in a product UI, and achieve better user experience. It started when my dev partners found an internal API limitation in a web app we own. This API limitation was causing a data visualization dashboard feature to throw…
Building product bandwagon with early adopters
This is a story where I had to re-think why my product was successful. A few months ago, I created a web app at Microsoft. It was designed to host internal service documentation for a large org in Windows team. I built the business case and product roadmap, then worked with a team of engineers…
Being a remote PM: pros & cons
In this post I share my experience as a remote PM. Being a remote PM is both a bundle of challenges and a passport to a lot of opportunities. Working remotely is without doubt a trending topic in the tech world today, but in my observation most remote workers (in long-term remote arrangements) are engineers….