⁉️Teammate FAQ
Here are some frequently asked questions about teamwork in our community.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kinds of teams can I join?
There are three different kinds of teams you can join:
Project training — This is our "apprenticeship training program. You are a teammate working alongside people in different functions to solve problems for a nonprofit.
Volunteering for our organization — This is where you sign up to volunteer for our nonprofit organization, working alongside peers and board of directors members to do project-based teamwork.
Class training — This is where you join cohort-based classes to train in different topics, some of which also offer team-based work environments.
Why does Tech Fleet focus on teamwork dynamics over skills?
We believe that empowered team success has nothing to do with your skills. It has everything to do with your team's dynamics of collective decision making, growth support, and healthy risk taking. All great agile teams make room for experimentation, learning, belonging, and shared ownership. Without these things, the work is not likely to happen at all! Teams will storm longer, and will work less efficiently.
No one single person makes or breaks the success of an empowered team. The team moves together, or not at all. This is the reason we focus so much on these dynamics. Empowered teams need much more than a lot of skills.
How many project-based teams can I join at the same time?
We encourage you to commit to only what you can handle at any given time. Only you can decide this. We ask that you commit to one single project training at a time, and you can be a volunteer at the same time you are participating in project training and class training.
What’s the weekly time commitment as a teammate?
As a project trainee — While there is no minimum requirement, we expect apprenticeship trainees commit to 15 to 20 hours weekly to project training. This is flexible and something you manage with your team. No one will prevent you from working less with your team, or working more. This is a decision for you the team to make together.
As a nonprofit volunteer for Tech Fleet — We cannot legally require you to work specific hours or hold a specific schedule if you are volunteering for our org. We make scheduling work around you and your scheduling commitments. You can contribute to as little as 1 hour a week as a nonprofit volunteer for Tech Fleet. The choice is yours!
As a classmate — We hold live classes and also make recordings available for classmates to experience the classes asynchronously. This helps classmates cater to their own schedules in and outside of the community.
What kinds of clients do you work with?
For project training we partner with other nonprofits who have already obtained a 501(c)(3) public charity status. None of them should require a non disclosure agreement or confidentiality agreement to work with us. These are the conditions they agree to when they partner with our organization. They know that they are a client because they offer you, the trainee, the opportunity to work directly with real businesses as a teammate.
For volunteer work, Tech Fleet is the client! We are a nonprofit with 501(c)(3) public charity status.
Are teams led by experts in our community?
Not at all! We offer coaching on project training in several areas like agile coaching, strategy coaching, and customer experience coaching. These coaches are NOT always very experienced (after all, it has nothing to do with skills and experience to succeed in teamwork). They are peers in our community who may also be practitioners. They may be doing their own training in Tech Fleet (like the Agile Coaching Residency) where they are learning how to coach others themselves. We are a peer-to-peer training ecosystem, and we've learned that peer-led learning offers opportunities to form the dynamics where everyone is learning from each other. No one is providing answers. No one is preventing failure. Those things are crucial for building team ownership and self-organization.
We may, however, offer opportunities for experienced people to work alongside teams as teammates. But even when we do, they themselves are not the people who provide answers. They have no hierarchy above the team. They ARE the team! They work alongside anyone else as a cross-functional teammate.
The dynamic of an "expert teaching the people who don't know" leads to people who are not empowered to fail fast and grow continuously. Failure and mistakes should be looked at as amazing things for teammates. They provide opportunity for learning and improvement (see continuous improvement practice here).
Am I considered a volunteer when I join projects?
When you are in project training, you are a trainee.
When you sign up as a nonprofit volunteer for Tech Fleet, you are considered a nonprofit volunteer.
Although these two seem similar, or the same, they are not. Trainees are expected to receive a training service, and as part of their training, they work on teams. HOWEVER, they are NOT expected to perform expert work or timely work with clients. This is not an agency. This is not a job. It's a training called an apprenticeship. Trainees are held to expectations that they are in training, and should not be beholden to schedules, timelines, or work capacity.
Nor should volunteers be held to rigors that employees get held to when they are paid.
See more here: Training Versus Volunteering
Do I get paid as a teammate?
Right now we don't offer paid roles for any project training. The nonprofit volunteer roles are unpaid. But they all come with valuable experience to gain.
Do I have to pay to be a teammate?
Project training is free to join and participate in
Volunteer training is free to join
Class training requires a registration fee per class, which is described on the syllabus of each class. Normally our classes run at a low cost of $50.00 per student.
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