Healthcare Scrum Master

My wife works in healthcare but not as a Scrum Master.  But I have talked to her a lot about "projects" that she works on.  I have heard some where a Scrum approach could be useful but it would be difficult to implement.  I have heard more daily activities that could benefit from some empirical approach than projects. 

Remember that the Scrum framework is not a project management solution.  It is an empirical value delivery framework. So if you were a Scrum Master in a healthcare setting, what kind of value delivery would you see as being able to benefit from the empirical, incremental approach of Scrum?

For those of you that have experience working as a Scrum master in the healthcare setting, what kind of projects do you generally work on. How long do the sprints usually last?

In Scrum each Sprint is a project: a temporary endeavor that yields a valuable outcome. Specifically, there must be a Done increment that meets a Sprint Goal.

There is often an organizational gravity to be overcome before this practice can be achieved. Hence, rather than ask how long Sprints usually last in a certain context, it can be better to first query if they are real.

Hi, I work as a scrum master and agile coach at a local hospital. Currently we have 6 scrum teams. All teams are part of the IT department. We have infrastructure teams, BI teams and teams working on the functional side of the "patient journey" Most teams are working in 2 or 4 week sprints. At the end we are doing a sprint review of all the teams together. Every team has a dedicated PO, and the business provides them with the right information via the business owners. Every quarter we do a planning session with the PO and BO's to plan the next quarter.

Hope that this givers you some info. Let me know if you want more!

@Andre Deuzing, please if you can still see this message, i need your help with knowing how this process you described works. I am a scrum master in health care ,with a background in nursing mostly did that in Africa, and realized it was different here. Thanks

In healthcare settings, Scrum teams often work on things like patient portals, clinical data platforms, or integrations with hospital systems such as EHR or lab systems. Because of compliance and validation requirements, teams usually coordinate closely with clinicians, QA, and regulatory stakeholders.

Sprint length can vary depending on how much review or validation is required. I have seen many teams run two week sprints, while others move to three weeks when there are heavier compliance checkpoints.

Another thing I have noticed is that some healthcare organizations collaborate with specialized engineering teams that build digital health platforms. Examples include teams working on platforms like Redox, Health Catalyst, or nonstopio that combine healthcare domain expertise with agile delivery practices.

How have others handled sprint planning when regulatory reviews slow down delivery cycles?

The team can't plan to have a Done Increment each Sprint. For work to be ready for Sprint Planning, dependencies will need to be resolved during Product Backlog refinement. This includes business, technical, workflow, and human dependencies.

Establish transparency over the deficit for release, i.e. those things which ought to be in the Definition of Done and satisfied each Sprint, but are not for whatever reason (e.g. compliance/validation). Any work that is not Done constitutes technical debt. This presents its own risks, and the wider enterprise may be oblivious or willfully blind to them right now.