Sense and Respond

Gothelf and Seiden argue that software changed what a company can learn about its customers and how fast, and that management practice has not caught up. The first half describes the shift, which is from planning and executing to sensing what is happening and responding continuously. The second half covers the management changes that allows, including how to fund work whose output is uncertain, how to set goals that survive learning and what a manager does once the team decides what to build. It is written for executives rather than practitioners, which makes it the book to hand upwards when the constraint sits above the team.