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Must-read for new product managers

"The Unicorn Project" by Gene Kim is a great read for many people in the technology industry but especially for new product managers. It covers many terms and tech used in software development, and promotes principles, that in my experience, have been the right approach to creating great software and motivated teams.

This book is for:

  • Relatively new product managers or people looking to get into product management. This book covers the entire spectrum of a company that uses technology to run the business. Everything from the executive side (including outside investors and boards) two the infrastructure everything runs on. As a product manager you need to understand the entire "company stack"in this book provides a taste and view of all of it

  • Developers who are frustrated by not being able to ship their code quickly. The story of this book is how a group of people made changes to how a a large co. worked, methodically and without burning it to the ground. It shows the pressures and forces that led to and keep the inefficiencies, and how to navigate them. 

  • Managers who are finding it hard to ship new features quickly or having trouble motivating their teams.

  • Anyone interested in better understanding all the moving parts in how software is made


When I started out as a product manager, it wasn't easy to know where to look for learning materials about the craft. There was a lot written on the internet but it was scattered around and incoherent because it came from different people with different approaches. With no experience, fitting it all together was impossible – like doing a puzzle without the image on the box.

The Unicorn Project puts so much of what a PM needs to understand in one place. So while it isn't about product management (it's about development) however, it provides a detailed overview of all the moving parts a product manager needs to understand and work with: business, marketing, development, data and analytics, quality, design, end users, even company politics.

Many people have written reviews about this book so I won't go into the details of what's covered, but I'll list a few things I appreciated about it:

  1. It's in novel form, so it's a story with characters and a plot. This is much more interesting than the typical dry, self-help format of most career-focused books. As an experienced PM, I can say the situations were familiar in places I've worked or in stories I've heard.

  2. It includes high-level principles. Things like the "5 Ideals" or "3 Horizons" or "Core vs. Context" are broad enough to be applied to anywhere, whether you work in a startup or a huge corporation.

  3. Lots of technical terminology. The story is told without holding back on the technical jargon; you get to hear exactly how engineers in the different disciplines really speak. As a PM you need to know just enough to have conversations with all the engineers and ask the right (and sometimes perfectly dumb) questions. TBH, this was one of the most valuable aspects of the book for me (and could be for other experienced PMs). There were areas – like DevOps – that I learned a lot about. And for new PMs better to be confused in private with a Google search bar close by, than in the mix on the job.

  4. Is was written recently. As a result, the references and technologies are relevant today so all the insights the characters are making in the story apply to you. It also makes reading it more fun, like watching a movie filmed in your home town where you know all the spots.

  5. It's actually well-written. You wouldn't expect a story about engineering and technology meant to communicate development concepts to be well-written, but it was. At no point does the writing break you out of the story. In fact, it moves at a perfect pace for 

Normally reading for career purposes is motivated by necessity and not enjoyment, but this one was actually enjoyable. I would even go as far as recommending it as a pleasure read if you identify as a nerd. And if you're an aspiring product manager, "The Unicorn Project" is a great primer on the world of software development you're likely to encounter – I'd consider it a must-read.