The term Scrum comes from software development in agile organizations. It is a term borrowed from the game of rugby because it emphasizes teamwork. The teamwork that Scrum leverages is a collaborative effort used for intricate work. In other words, Scrum is a framework for creating, delivering, and maintaining complex results for software products.
Now that the orthodontic specialty is making a digital transformation, we create, deliver, and maintain complex treatment plans as digital “products” that must come from our practices. Any digital planning software for clear aligner therapy or a digital fixed appliance system comes with a digital product backlog. These customized plans, such as ClinChecks®, must be prepared in a matter of days and becomes a significant bottleneck. This bottleneck is both a performer issue and a system issue for today’s orthodontic practice. The backlog also leads to digital burnout for many doctors. Therefore, implementing the Scrum framework can alleviate this bottleneck.
A correctly implemented Scrum will:
- Increase the speed of development
- Align individual and practice objectives
- Create a culture driven by performance
- Support value creation
- Achieve stable and consistent communication of performance at all levels
- Enhance individual growth and quality of life
Companies worldwide use Scrum to research technologies, develop products, enhance software, and many more applications. It can help accelerate a small development team’s productivity and deliver results in hours or days through iterative sprints. As a result, these sprints allow for improvement and scale of a complex process that can develop a significant backlog which would typically take weeks to work through. The Scrum team is composed of the Product Owner, the Development Team, and the Scrum Master.
The Product Owner
In an orthodontic practice looking to implement Scrum to improve their digital work, the product owner is the doctor. The orthodontist is often responsible for maximizing the product (a customized treatment plan) and the development team’s work. Although the doctor can help the development team perform their task, they are ultimately responsible for the product. We are ultimately accountable.
The Development Team
Consists of technicians who do the work for delivering a potentially releasable treatment plan at the end of each sprint. They are self-organizing and cross-functional. This team is a small group of people who develop the customized, digital, orthodontic plan. These can be the TREAT technicians (when using Invisalign®) or in-house technicians who prepare Clinchecks and similar digital resources.
The Scrum Master
The Scrum Master is a person ensuring that Scrum is understood and enacted, sets up meetings, and monitors everything. This person is referred to as the digital coordinator, Clincheck coordinator, or CAD coordinator in orthodontic practice. The Scrum Master helps the development team with frequent communication, supports reporting, and promotes the Scrum principles while guiding the outcome.
When you consider the amount of CAD work a digital orthodontic practice has to deliver for its patients, it makes sense to implement a productivity framework. By implementing the Scrum framework to manage a large volume of Clinchecks or other digital plans, a practice can leverage a small, effective team approach. Scrum helps alleviate the time and effort an orthodontist must put into Clinchecks and other digital treatment plans.
