The Agile Dentist

You can learn a lot about agile
while you are at the dentists office.

I cannot think of a more helpless feeling than being in the dentist’s chair while getting a major procedure done.  You are medicated, filled with nitrous oxide but you are still conscious and feel pain; you just can’t do anything about it.  It was during this time of profound discomfort that something dawned on me.  Software developers can learn a lot from dentists.  This week I would like to expound on that topic.

I was receiving a root canal and feeling like I was in the middle of fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson.  My regular dentist was not in the office and so another was spending time using endodontic files on my mouth.  This is when it dawned on me.  My dental practice is a highly functioning team with each dentist able to do the same procedure on any other patient in the practice.  There were no specialists and it wasn't necessary for my dentist to be called in on her day off to get my root canal done.  Talk about cross functional.

Next, I had a hygienist numb my mouth and my doctor to the work.  I also noticed another person in the room that I never recognized before. This was a dental resident who held the suction tube and watched and learned while my dentist worked on my bad tooth.  This was pair programming because I could overhear the resident asking questions and providing instruments to the dentist while they worked on me.  It is one thing to pass tests in dental school. I am sure it is completely another thing when you are fiddling around with a real person’s mouth so this is how knowledge is passed from one generation to the next.

Finally, when my root canal was finished and when the dentist ground my tooth for a crown the resident took charge and finished the job.  I watched her as she weaned me from the nitrous oxide.  Then using a dental drill and resin she fashioned a crown to ware until the permanent version is put into place.  What I witnessed was a textbook example of how software developers should work together and I saw it at the dentist office.  Everyone was cross functional.  Senior team members were teamed up with junior members to mentor them and show them the ropes in the real world.  Finally, the junior members were trusted to do work without supervision.  It was a revelation.

So what I can take away from this experience is that software development does not have to be unpleasant like a root canal.  By using pair programming in the correct fashion, trusting junior developers to do the right thing and making sure there are plenty of opportunities to mentor you have the makings of a fantastic cross functional team.  This is good to know as I work toward building my own business that I have a good working model for an agile team.  Who knew that the dentist can be agile?

Until next time.