SGA · Production Hardening Sprint

From Prototype
to Production.

The need to take our 20+ prototypes and develop them into fully automated production systems.

SGA Dental Partners · Scott Guest
Briefing for Karen Flug & Myles · May 13, 2026
01 · Current Projects
What we've shipped · 20+ projects in use today

20+ projects across 3 areas.

Click any tile to open. Each one creates value today — and each one is currently a hand-cranked prototype.

What we've built
20+ working tools — each in use by ops, leadership, or a specific consumer. The portfolio is real and creating value.
What's missing
None of them are production-grade. Every one routes through Scott, has no monitoring, and has no handoff path.
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
02 / 12
02 · Today's Reality
The structural problem

Scott is the plumbing.

Every report runs because I manually trigger it. Nothing is monitored. Nothing has a handoff path.

ABOVE GROUND · WHAT PEOPLE SEE S-curve live · daily Headway people system Daybreak daily brief Compounder Mitch & Paul RIS · HIS scorecards + 17 more in active use GROUND LEVEL BELOW GROUND · INVISIBLE · HAND-CRANKED SCOTT Hand-cranking the pump every morning. No monitoring · No alerts · No handoff path PUMP PUMP
Bus Factor
If Scott is out for a week, half the reports stop. Nobody else can pick them up — nothing is documented or owned.
Silent Failures
No monitoring. When a scraper breaks or refresh fails, nobody knows until the meeting where the data is wrong.
No Handoff
Every tool depends on Scott's personal scripts, credentials, and memory. None of it is transferable.
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
03 / 12
03 · Product · Headway
Product layer · the people system

Four projects → one integrated workforce view.

Headway combines hiring, retention, and capacity signals into one operating view — for HR, RODs, and Practice Managers. Open Headway →

BUILDING BLOCKS PRODUCT CONSUMERS Replacement Index RIS · provider replacement risk Hiring Index HIS · time-to-hire & pipeline health Headcount Analysis Staffing levels by practice/role Labor Analysis Hours vs production by provider PRODUCT Headway Hiring · retention · capacity in one operating view sga-headway-v2.pages.dev TIER 01 HR / People Ops Karen Flug · headcount & hiring TIER 02 Regional Ops RODs · staffing decisions TIER 03 Practice Managers OMs · day-to-day team health
What Headway answers
"Where are we understaffed?" · "Who's at risk of leaving?" · "Can we afford to hire?" · "How does labor cost compare to production?"
Status
Headway is built. Once the plumbing exists, it stops being a Scott-cranked dashboard and starts being a real product the team operates.
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
04 / 12
04 · Daybreak · The Process
Product layer · Daybreak · five-stage pipeline

Five stages. Every morning. Same pipeline. → Open Daybreak

Daybreak runs once per tier per morning. The grain changes (practice · region · network); the process is identical.

01
Ingest
Pull all sources
Normalize to practice
Time-align to yesterday
Check
freshness · completeness · source availability
~30 seconds
02
Score
6 health domains
Production · Collections
Schedule · Retention
Hygiene · Labor
Compute
score · trend · pacing delta vs. prior year + S-Curve
~2 minutes
03
Rank
Prioritize actions
Candidate actions →
impact × confidence
× tier-fit filter
Uses memory
which actions worked for this OM previously?
~1 minute
04
Write
Generate narrative
Claude Opus 4.7
tier-specific prompt
tone · altitude · length
Includes
quote · principle · trend rationale per action
~3 minutes
05
Deliver
Route to audience
OM · email + PDF
ROD · dashboard
Ops · exec brief
Timing
in inbox by 6:15 AM CT before huddle window
~90 seconds
Memory
Every past decision + outcome · feeds Score (trend), Rank (what worked before), Write (what resonated).
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
05 / 12
05 · Daybreak · The Architecture
Product layer · Daybreak · sources, engine, audiences

Six sources flow in. Three audiences come out.

Green = live today. Gold = next wave. The engine is identical for all audiences — only the writer's tone and the delivery format change.

DATA SOURCES DAYBREAK DECISION ENGINE AUDIENCE OUTPUTS Power BI Financials · production · collections · labor LIVE Dental Intel Hygiene · recall · reappointment LIVE PeerLogic Phone system · call volume · routing LIVE Neurality AI voice agent · call outcomes NEXT NexHealth Scheduling · capacity · OSA NEXT Modento Patient communications · recall NEXT + MORE CANDIDATES · Q2 DAYBREAK · DECISION ENGINE 01 · INGEST Pull all sources · normalize to practice-grain 02 · SCORE 6-domain health score · trend · pacing delta 03 · RANK Top actions per entity · OM/ROD/Ops grain 04 · WRITE Claude Opus 4.7 drafts narrative per tier 05 · DELIVER Email · print · dashboard — per audience MEMORY past decisions + outcomes feed Score & Rank TIER 01 OM Morning Brief 248 practices · one page · daily ● LIVE TODAY TIER 02 ROD Regional Brief ~15 regions · daily + weekly ◐ NEXT WAVE TIER 03 Leadership Exec Brief Network-wide · weekly ◐ NEXT WAVE ↻ FEEDBACK · actions & outcomes → MEMORY
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
06 / 12
06 · Product · Lookout (Future)
Product layer · the third opportunity

Once the plumbing exists, anyone runs their own analysis.

Lookout becomes possible only after the DAX building blocks are validated and the automation layer is real. It's the leverage payoff.

USERS ASK QUESTIONS LOOKOUT · SELF-SERVE INSTANT ANSWERS Mitch (Finance) "Production by region, last 12 weeks" Pam (RCM) "Which payers paid slowest this month?" Ron (IT) "Open tickets older than 7 days, by location" FUTURE PRODUCT Lookout Pre-validated DAX blocks Drag & drop assembly Instant answers No Scott. No tickets. No waiting. FOR MITCH Regional Production Custom dashboard · drillable ⚡ Built in 3 min FOR PAM Payer Aging Report Ranked · drillable ⚡ Built in 3 min FOR RON Ticket Aging Dashboard By location · by team ⚡ Built in 3 min
Today
3 questions = 3 Slack messages to Scott → 3 days → 3 hand-built reports.
With Lookout
3 questions = 3 self-serve queries → 3 minutes → 3 reports they own.
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
07 / 12
07 · The Blueprint
This is the whole argument

Above ground & below.

Products are what Karen sees. The plumbing is what makes them run. Today the bottom three layers don't exist as a real system — they exist in Scott's head.

↑ ABOVE GROUND · PRODUCTS PEOPLE USE
↓ BELOW GROUND · THE PLUMBING (what we need to build properly)
DAX Query System
635 validated measures · organized by domain · single source of truth
PARTIAL · Needs validation
Data Sources
Power BI · Dental Intel · PeerLogic · Neurality · NexHealth · Modento
LIVE · Connected
Automation Platform
Schedulers · retries · alerts · health monitoring  ·  This is the keystone.
NOT YET BUILT
Secure Environment
Auth · audit logs · key management · BAA-ready for PHI Phase B
NOT YET BUILT
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
08 / 12
08 · Structural Risk
If we don't build the plumbing

Today this looks like velocity. In six months it looks like collapse.

The portfolio is currently a stack of prototypes one person can carry. As the stack grows, the carry gets heavier — and the failure surface gets wider.

RISK 01 · PEOPLE
Bus Factor
Single point of failure
What breaks
If Scott is out for a week, half the reports stop. Nobody else can pick them up — nothing is documented or owned.
Today's mitigation
Scott doesn't take vacations.
RISK 02 · QUALITY
Silent Failures
No monitoring layer
What breaks
When a scraper breaks or a refresh fails, nobody knows until the meeting where the data is wrong. Trust in the data erodes.
Today's mitigation
Scott checks each system manually each morning.
RISK 03 · SCALE
No Compounding
Stack grows fragile
What breaks
Every new project adds load to the existing stack. In six months, Scott firefights prototypes instead of building new value.
Today's mitigation
Working longer hours. Not sustainable.
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
09 / 12
09 · The Ask
What I need · from Myles and Karen

Two to three weeks. Focused time. One sprint.

A moratorium on new project requests so the existing portfolio gets a real foundation.

01

Validate all DAX queries

635 measures. Confirm definitions, alignment with PBI source of truth, and reusability as building blocks across every product above ground.

02

Build the automation infrastructure — the keystone

Schedulers, retries, alerts, health monitoring. This layer has never been built. It is what makes everything else durable. Without it, nothing else matters.

03

Wire the existing 20+ projects to the new infrastructure

Headway, Daybreak, every individual report. They stop being hand-cranked and start being real systems.

04

Documentation, ownership, & handoff

Runbooks. Ownership maps. Clear escalation paths. The next person can run this — and Scott can take a vacation without the portfolio collapsing.

SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
10 / 12
10 · Sprint Plan
Three weeks · what gets done

Validate. Build. Wire. Hand off.

The orange Automation Platform bar spans all three weeks — that's the keystone.

WORKSTREAM
Week 1 · Validate
Week 2 · Build
Week 3 · Wire & Ship
Validate 635 DAX queries
DAX validation sprint
Document data sources
Source inventory + access
BUILD automation infra
AUTOMATION PLATFORM · the keystone · never built before
Secure environment
Auth + audit + key management
Wire Headway
Headway runs on the new plumbing
Wire Daybreak
Daybreak runs on the new plumbing
Migrate 17 individual tools
Migrate to infra
Monitoring + alerting
Health checks live
Docs + handoff prep
Runbooks + ownership
SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
11 / 12
11 · After the Sprint
The payoff · what 2–3 weeks of focus actually buys

The next year is leverage, not firefighting.

Outcome 01

Scale & leverage

Scott stops being the pump. New work no longer crushes existing work. The portfolio compounds instead of decaying. Each new project gets cheaper because it inherits the plumbing.

Outcome 02

Real monitoring

Failures alert. Health is visible. Nobody finds out about a broken refresh in the meeting where the data is wrong. The data layer is trustworthy by default.

Outcome 03

Ownership & handoff

Documented systems. Clear runbooks. A second engineer can take over any tool. Scott can take time off — the data still flows. The org doesn't depend on one person.

Outcome 04

Lookout becomes possible

Once building blocks are validated and automated, the team can run their own analyses. Self-serve reporting moves from "someday" to "this quarter." The next product gets built on the foundation, not on Scott.

SGA · Production Hardening Sprint
12 / 12