In 1999, the world saw the launch of Napster, the debut of The Matrix, and the failure of NASA’s Mars Polar Lander mission, which crashed into the Martian surface due to a preventable software miscalculation. The root cause? A critical flaw in software design and inadequate communication between engineering teams. The lander’s software prematurely shut off its descent engines, mistakenly interpreting normal vibrations as evidence that the spacecraft had already landed. This error led to the complete loss of the mission.
A major contributing factor was the lack of structured leadership and oversight, as highlighted in the report on the mission’s loss. The review board noted that this led to excessive overtime, single-person staffing in key technical areas, and insufficient peer interaction. These factors ultimately resulted in a breakdown in inter-group communication. This lack of coordination allowed critical issues, including software miscalculations, to slip through testing unnoticed. Could they have benefited from using Delivery Leads?
A Lesson from High-Stakes Engineering Projects
This failure highlights a crucial lesson: Even the most advanced teams can be derailed by miscommunication, misalignment, and process breakdowns. Whether you’re landing a spacecraft or launching a software product, having someone dedicated to managing cross-functional collaboration and keeping all moving parts in sync can mean the difference between success and failure.
Teams are made up of specialists — developers write code, designers craft user experiences, and product managers drive business goals. When a project faces uncertainty or conflict, people tend to fall back on their core expertise rather than addressing broader team challenges.
This isn’t a bad thing. After all, the work still moves forward. But it often means that team dynamics, communication breakdowns, and unresolved conflicts get pushed aside. If no one is explicitly responsible for managing these challenges, they become invisible until they create real damage — slowing progress, eroding trust, and leading to missed opportunities.
This is where Delivery Leads prove their value: not just in keeping things moving, but in ensuring teams are working on the right things in the right way.
Keeping Things Moving in the Right Direction
A Delivery Lead (or a Scrum Master or Project Lead, depending on your team’s structure) is uniquely positioned to handle the human and process sides of a project. Their role isn’t just about timelines and standups — it’s about surfacing and resolving hidden issues before they derail the work.
1. They create a space for uncomfortable conversations.
Technical teams are often trained to avoid “soft” problems. Developers and designers aren’t incentivized to address team misalignment, communication gaps, or unclear priorities, so these issues linger.
Research on team performance shows that when no one is explicitly responsible for managing interpersonal and process challenges, they are often neglected in favor of more tangible, output-driven work. Teams naturally prioritize visible progress like coding, designing, and shipping features. That’s because those activities are easier to measure and reward. Meanwhile, unresolved tensions or misaligned expectations can quietly erode trust, efficiency, and long-term project success.
A Delivery Lead ensures that cross-functional friction is addressed early rather than ignored until it causes frustration or rework.
Example: A team struggling with unclear acceptance criteria might repeatedly build features that don’t meet expectations. Without a Delivery Lead to facilitate better alignment with stakeholders, developers might silently grow frustrated, and product managers might assume the team is underperforming. Instead of an endless cycle of rework, a Delivery Lead ensures the conversation happens before misalignment turns into wasted effort.
2. They identify and mitigate team silos.
It’s easy for developers, designers, and product managers to drift into separate worlds, especially on remote or hybrid teams.
Delivery Leads actively bridge gaps between disciplines, ensuring that technical feasibility, user experience, and business goals remain connected.
Example: A designer might be refining UI elements without realizing that backend constraints make their vision difficult to implement. Without a Delivery Lead ensuring ongoing collaboration, the team might waste weeks on an impractical approach.
3. Delivery Leads help teams navigate change without losing focus.
Change is inevitable in software projects — shifting priorities, stakeholder feedback, unexpected technical hurdles. When this happens, teams often panic and retreat into execution mode, hoping to just “get something done.”
A Delivery Lead guides the team through uncertainty, keeping discussions focused on what actually matters for success.
Example: Midway through a sprint, a client requests a major change to an existing feature. Without a Delivery Lead, developers might start implementing the change immediately, assuming urgency, while designers and product managers scramble to catch up. This results in wasted effort when the team later discovers key dependencies that weren’t considered. A Delivery Lead would facilitate a quick discussion to align on impact, scope, and feasibility before work begins, ensuring the team makes an informed decision rather than reacting in silos.
What Happens When a Team Doesn’t Have a Delivery Lead?
What happens when a team doesn’t have someone actively managing these dynamics?
1. Communication gaps create avoidable mistakes.
Without a Delivery Lead, teams often assume alignment instead of confirming it. This leads to:
- Features built based on outdated assumptions
- Stakeholder feedback not reaching the right people
- Developers wasting time on unnecessary complexity
2. Conflict festers instead of being addressed.
Disagreements between teams are normal, but when no one is responsible for surfacing and resolving them, they simmer into resentment.
- Developers might get frustrated with unclear requirements but never voice their concerns.
- Designers might feel their work is deprioritized but not know how to escalate the issue.
- PMs might assume the team is moving too slowly without understanding the blockers.
3. Teams default to execution, not problem-solving.
Without someone focusing on team dynamics, the natural instinct is to just keep moving. But some problems can’t be solved by just writing more code or pushing out more designs.
- The root cause of slow delivery might not be “the team is slow” but “we’re missing key information to make decisions.”
- The reason features aren’t getting used might not be “the users don’t get it” but “we never validated the problem before building.”
A Delivery Lead can identify the root cause of dysfunction and fix the process instead of burning out the team.
Execution Alone Isn’t Enough—Teams Need Clarity and Alignment
Investing in a Delivery Lead isn’t about adding extra costs. It’s about protecting your investment and ensuring your project delivers real value. Code will get written, designs will get made, and features will get shipped. But without someone focused on communication, collaboration, and problem-solving, teams miss out on:
✅ Faster decision-making
✅ Fewer miscommunications and rework
✅ More productive and engaged team members
✅ A higher chance of long-term project success
In short, Delivery Leads don’t just manage schedules — they manage the gaps between people, processes, and priorities. With their guidance, teams can navigate challenges more smoothly, collaborate more effectively, and achieve better outcomes together.