🧑‍🤝‍🧑Our Approach to Learning

Overview

Tech Fleet apprenticeships and community education offer a safe environment to fail with teams and gives you the same experience as you’d get on an agency or in-house teams. Tech Fleet works with actual clients and incubates its own open source product ideas in reality, giving you a true-to-life experience of what it's like building products in the world. Peers learn from other peers; apprentices learn from co-leads; co-leads learn from apprentices, or other co-leads. No one is the "expert" or the "boss", and everybody is learning together. When we can get them, community contributors join projects as mentors for subject matter expertise.

You don’t need any experience to get into an entry-level apprentice or lead role in Tech Fleet. Simply apply to projects. Leads on projects hire apprentices on projects.

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is crucial for successful Agile teams. Being a servant leader means you're not telling people what to do or giving them the answer, or preventing them from failing. You are their guide and empowering them to find the answer on their own. Leads in Tech Fleet are expected to be servant leaders. They are not managers or "bosses", they are not above anyone else on the team. Leads are contributors on the team, working on the same deliverables alongside apprentices, who lead and guide apprentices to success while learning themselves. Leads should be "on the front lines" in Tech Fleet. Project mentors outside of teams can help guide leads on advanced topics.

Learning by Doing

In school you’re taught how to deliver a perfect, finished end result. In practice product teams rarely see the opportunity for a "perfect end result" and achieve things through quick, continuous delivery of things, a bit at a time. Apprentices and leads learn to work on the most important things each week through their own determination. They demo to clients and feedback to adjust plans each week. In Tech Fleet it's about progress over perfection. How far can the team progress in 8 weeks? Tech Fleet apprenticeships allow you to build mixed sets of skills from different roles as you contribute. Projects allow you to work with cross-functional team members with different roles across Research, Design, Business Strategy, Development, and other roles. You can pitch in to any area you want during a project, whether it’s part of your role or not. This allows people to get exposed to new career paths and try them out while they’re learning their craft.

Team Structure

Project structure is set up on Tech Fleet projects so that there's redundancy in roles. Leads who are taking leadership positions for the first time can sign up with co-leads to help mentor them as a servant leader, or contribute to work alongside each other as equals.

All leads and co-leads are equals on teams. No lead is "above" another lead or co-lead. No lead is a "above" apprentices either. Apprentices and leads are on equal footing when it comes to work; everyone pitches in to what they commit to each week in sprint planning sessions, lead and apprentice both. On the team you are one collective team doing work together, and roles matter less when progressing as a whole. You will experience different things on different Tech Fleet projects, as it should be in the real world on Agile teams who fit Agile to their context.