Coming soon from Technics Publications
Field notes for the uncertain, on AI and product management
A field notebook for product managers and the engineers, designers, and leaders working alongside them, written from inside a transition imposed by AI, which hasn't yet finished and, the book argues, never fully will.
Publishing with Technics Publications
Foreword by Scott Hanselman
The book
Permanently Unfinished is a field notebook for product managers learning to work inside a squeeze that AI has made permanent: relentless external noise insisting AI changes everything; competitive paranoia flowing from the boardrooms of companies down through the ranks; and the private uncertainty of not knowing what you're capable of with these tools, or what's expected of you to stay relevant.
This is not a guide to the tools and AI models. It is a reflection of the author's personal lived experience as a product manager in a large software company, on boundaries between product, engineering, and design dissolving, and roles inevitably reforming, and finding your way as a consumer of AI and a producer of AI. It's about finding signal in the noise, reading the silence, and navigating uncertainty when shipping AI features as continuous experiments, and embracing the discomfort of burying the Minimum Viable Product concept.
The book will ask as many questions as it tries to answer, and mostly it empowers the reader with a sense of agency and methods for making peace with ever growing uncertainty in an AI-hyped world, where snake oil exists side by side with real tangible value, but where value requires constant experimentation and the master skill is knowing what to build, and where AI pushes us to stay relevant in new, unexplored ways. Permanently Unfinished is a human story seen through the lens of product management, told from inside a transition still underway.
“Many people around you are likely having the same private conversation with themselves that you are; wondering if they're keeping up and staying relevant, wondering if anyone else feels this confused too. AI is a fantastic tool, but I can go from full confidence to self-doubt on the same day because of the uncertainty AI brings with it. Uncertainty won't go away any time soon, so the best we can do is to embrace it as a new working condition, give ourselves permission to explore, set our imagination free, and notice the costs, one experiment at a time.”
— Søren Friis Alexandersen
Advance praise
The manuscript is currently out with early readers and proofreaders. Their comments and recommendations will appear here as they come in.
“AI is making it possible to build almost anything. Permanently Unfinished explores the harder question of deciding what is worth building while the tools keep changing beneath us. Søren writes with curiosity, humility, and the perspective of someone doing the work in real time. This is an honest field guide to developing judgment in a moment when none of us gets to stand still.”
Scott Hanselman
VP, Member of Technical Staff at Microsoft/GitHub
Host of The Hanselminutes Podcast
“Most books about AI promise answers. Permanently Unfinished is more interesting because it begins with the recognition that we do not have them yet. Søren Friis Alexandersen writes from inside that uncertainty, asking what happens to our roles, our judgement and our sense of professional identity when the boundaries of what we can do suddenly begin to move. That is a much more important conversation than another list of AI tools.”
Sune Selsbæk-Reitz
Author of Promptism
“A timely and highly relevant book, and I can't imagine anyone better positioned to write it, combining the professional insight of a product manager with the personal experience of living through this moment in AI. The stakes could not be higher. I can't wait to read the rest.”
Lasse Rindom
Host of The Only Constant
Lead AI & Technology Strategist at BASICO
“I found myself on nearly every page. This is not another book about AI 101. It's an invitation to sit with the questions AI raises instead of shouting answers through the dust. It is personal, humanly fragile, and asks what's uncommon to ask out loud – and that's exactly why it's great.”
Tobias Schwedler
Product Owner, DYCE
“A genuine master of the craft with a refreshingly non-conformist take. Søren's insights on this strange new AI-infused world are especially sharp. This book will be great.”
Jonathan Davis
Principal Security Assurance Engineer, Microsoft
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Speaking
Then you're in good company. Uncertainty as the new working condition is a keynote drawn from the book: field notes from inside the AI transition, on what it asks of the people doing the work, and what it demands of the organizations trying to lead them through it.
“Is your team building new skills, or just hoping the old ones still apply?”
Not a tools talk, and not a hype talk. It's an honest account of what changes when the ground keeps moving: how roles reform, how judgment becomes the scarce skill, and how teams make peace with never being finished.
FAQ
No. Søren works at Microsoft, but Permanently Unfinished is an independent, personal project. The views in the book are his own.
No. Anything the book touches on that relates to Microsoft draws only on what's already public knowledge; there's no internal or confidential information here. The book itself isn't about Microsoft; it's Søren's reflection on the craft of product management, and the questions it raises apply just as directly to PMs at any software company as they do to his own.
Permanently Unfinished is being published by Technics Publications, a publisher known for its data management, architecture, and enterprise strategy titles (including the DMBOK).
Publication is scheduled for early 2027, but may be published sooner. Join the notify list and you'll hear the moment it's available.
E-book and paperback are planned. Details will be confirmed closer to publication.
Product managers, primarily, plus the engineers, designers, architects, consultants and adjacent roles working alongside them, who are navigating the same shift in how software gets built.
No. The tools will be outdated by the time you read this; that's the point. The book is about the uncertainty and judgment underneath the tools, which doesn't expire with the next model release.