The IT Industry Needs Trout Ticklers
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Every High-Performing Software Team Needs a Trout Tickler
For most of my career, I understood the common roles in software development.
Developers, team leads, project managers, product owners, scrum masters, executives—those all made sense to me.
Then I worked with someone whose title was Delivery Lead.
At first, I wasn't entirely sure what they did.
From the outside, it looked like they ran meetings, kept people talking, and generally made sure things stayed organised. Useful, certainly, but it didn't initially seem like a role that could have a huge impact on a team.
Over time, I realised how wrong that assumption was.
The Things That Don't Just Happen
High-performing software teams often make success look effortless.
Meetings stay focused.
Dependencies get managed.
People collaborate effectively.
Problems are surfaced early.
Work gets delivered consistently.
Stakeholders stay informed.
Teams maintain momentum.
The mistake is assuming these things happen naturally.
They don't.
Someone is usually working behind the scenes to make them happen.
The Invisible Work
The Delivery Lead I worked with wasn't constantly issuing instructions or making grand interventions.
In fact, quite the opposite.
Most of the work was subtle.
A quick conversation before a problem escalated.
A small adjustment to a meeting agenda.
A conversation between teams before a dependency became a blocker.
A one-to-one with someone who was struggling.
A gentle nudge to keep a project moving in the right direction.
Most of the time, you barely noticed it happening.
Which is precisely why it was so effective.
The Trout Tickler
For some reason, my brain connected this experience with an old memory about trout tickling.
Trout tickling is the practice of catching a trout by gently stroking its underside until it becomes calm enough to be lifted from the water.
It's not a dramatic process.
It's subtle.
Patient.
Precise.
If you walked past someone doing it, you might not even realise anything important was happening.
That's exactly how I came to see a great Delivery Lead.
Not as someone constantly imposing control, but as someone making countless small adjustments that keep a system functioning smoothly.
A little correction here.
A little support there.
A little preventative maintenance before issues become serious.
Maintaining the System
One lesson I took from this experience is that teams require maintenance just as much as software systems do.
Relationships need attention.
Communication channels need tending.
Dependencies need managing.
Small problems need resolving before they become large ones.
Left alone, friction accumulates.
Misunderstandings grow.
Processes drift.
Performance declines.
The best Delivery Leads seem to understand this instinctively.
They're constantly making tiny course corrections that keep the team aligned.
Excellence Isn't Always Obvious
Another lesson was recognising how difficult it can be to appreciate expertise outside your own domain.
Engineers are often guilty of assuming that because something isn't technical, it must be straightforward.
I've certainly been guilty of that mindset in the past.
The reality is that every discipline has its own skills, experience, and expertise.
A great engineer can make complex software look simple.
A great Delivery Lead can make organisational complexity look simple.
Neither outcome happens by accident.
Small Adjustments Beat Big Reactions
One of the most valuable things I observed was the power of subtle steering.
Rather than waiting for problems to become crises, the Delivery Lead would make small interventions early.
A conversation.
A clarification.
A reminder.
A minor adjustment.
Those tiny corrections prevented the need for dramatic corrections later.
It's a principle that applies far beyond delivery management.
The best engineers often work this way too.
The best leaders certainly do.
Small, consistent adjustments are usually more effective than occasional dramatic interventions.
Final Thoughts
Software teams are complex systems made of people, processes, relationships, and technology.
Keeping those systems healthy requires more than technical expertise.
It requires people who can maintain momentum, resolve friction, build relationships, and keep everyone moving in the same direction.
The best people at this rarely attract attention because, when they're doing their job well, everything simply appears to work.
Like an expert trout tickler, their influence is subtle, patient, and easy to miss.
Until they're gone.
Then you realise just how much they were doing all along.