Product management is, for me, the most exciting, rewarding, and challenging job in tech.  If you’re a data junkie, a control freak, ready to be the default owner of all action items, willing to be held accountable for product success, prepared to build strategy from scratch, and able to defend and sell your product strategy to everyone around you, product management may be your calling.  Few other roles give you a 360-degree view of your business, leverage to solve broad problems, and the satisfaction of blazing trails that others follow.

My career has spanned large companies like Cisco and HP, startups like Diamanti and Topspin, and game-changing companies in-between like Opsware and DiviCom.  I’ve focused on information technology (IT) – software and hardware for data centers.  Though each environment presents a different set of tradeoffs, the requirement for clear, decisive product leadership always exists.  My motivation for this blog site is to share thoughts and observations on being a product manager in the IT industry and, in doing so, be of some assistance to others who choose this career path.

Thank you for visiting PM Trails.

Mark Balch

@markbalch