Tech Fleet News - June 2026 - Cross-Functional Teams

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.”

— Steve Jobs

This month, we’re focusing on what it really looks like when cross-functional agile teams build together instead of working in silos.

You can see this everywhere right now, in client projects, internal work, and even in how we’re shaping Tech Fleet itself. In this issue, we're highlighting some of the work our teams accomplished in May and sharing new opportunities to get involved in June.

From UX and product to research, strategy, delivery, and operations, Tech Fleet offers opportunities to work in real agile teams where people step beyond their lanes, support one another, and share ownership of outcomes.

🌟 May Highlights

Membership Experience Team: Exploring the Future of Professional Growth

Over the past three months, Tech Fleet has been exploring how to reach and support professionals we don’t yet serve, while also understanding what our current members need most.

The phase 2 Membership Experience Team focused on one important question:

How can we empower experienced professionals to become influential service leaders across industries?

People assume that skills or knowledge alone determine success. But through surveys, user interviews, two Google Design Sprint concept tests, and desk research, we learned that growth and leadership are far more nuanced.

What We Found

Our research surfaced several clear themes:

✅Team growth is seen as a core leadership responsibility.

✅Shared ideas, different language. Concepts like service leadership and psychological safety show up often, but people use different words to describe them

✅Growth is a necessity, not a choice and everyone's learning journey looks different.

As exploratory research, it gave us over 146 research questions and a clearer sense of where to look next.

What This Means for Tech Fleet

These findings open up important conversations for the future:

• People’s needs and circumstances vary. What do services and offerings that are tailored to people's individual needs look like?
• There’s a risk of gatekeeping through terminology. How do we ensure the language we use to describe what we offer doesn't become a barrier to people who would benefit the most?
• Motivation matters. We need to understand further where people’s motivation for growth and connection lies.

The team has created two proof of concepts to support professionals in measuring and reflecting on their growth through team practices. Feel free to play around with these:

Test Track, A real-world challenge marketplace where people can practice active learning in a community by voting on, solving, and proposing real problems to solve.

Growth Trail, A "growth inspired game" where people can follow a path and track their growth, continuously reflecting on the way they work with others.

🪞Community Reflection

Human Time Matters

Program Management team put an important principle into practice this month by conducting a team reset. The team created space to openly discuss burnout, morale, and how people were feeling as individuals and teammates.

"HUMAN TIME! Time and time again, in moments of struggle and high stress, do not push through the work

no matter what happens. Stop and talk about the Big Pink Polkadot Elephant in the Room. Be humans with each other.

Whatever that thing is that needs to be talked about, pause, and talk about that first. Give space and listen. Then let the team drive when they get back to work.

It's not about the work, friends. It's about moving together. The work happens as a result. Work cannot and should not and will not happen without that human time foundation.”*

— Morgan Denner, Program Management Team

💭Term of the Week

Cross‑Functional Agile Team

We hear the term “cross-functional agile team” in Tech Fleet and in modern tech teams; but what does it actually mean?

Many join agile teams thinking, “I’m a UX Designer/Researcher, so I should be only doing design or research tasks.” Yes, you should be doing that, and your craft matters, but in an agile team, your role isn’t a box you stay inside. It’s just one part of what you bring to the table.

Being cross-functional means you’re not working in isolation. You’re working with the team. You stay close to the work as it evolves, share early instead of waiting for “perfect results,” ask questions, and help move things forward even when it’s not strictly your lane.

And this is the part that often surprises people. The team owns the outcome, not just the tasks.

Agile teams don’t just take assignments and execute them. They figure things out together. They self-organize, look at the problem as a group, and decide what needs to happen next. There’s no “that’s not my job” mindset; instead, people step in where they’re needed.

Sometimes that even sounds like, “I joined as a designer, but this sprint I want to help shape the product direction too.”

That’s what cross-functional really means. People stretch a bit beyond their titles, try new things, support each other, and grow along the way. And when that happens, the team doesn’t just work better; it becomes stronger.

💡 Tip

Stay curious about other functions

Ask how someone is thinking, listen in on conversations outside your lane, and notice what matters to the people around you. Curiosity helps you understand the whole picture and makes it easier for the team to move together.

🚀 June Opportunities

Ready to put these ideas into practice? Here are several ways to get involved this month.

Client Project Openings

• Viable Community Phase 3: This project focuses on designing and validating a user-centered digital platform aimed at supporting ecosystem regeneration through sustainable resource allocation and community collaboration.
• Track Poli Phase 3: Track Poli's mission is to make political decisions more visible to the public and increase accountability.

Internal Project Opportunities

• Tech Fleet - Re-Brand: Help reimagine Tech Fleet’s brand identity—including personality, visuals, voice and tone, and potentially the company name—and apply it across our public-facing experiences.
• Tech Fleet - Program Management Apprenticeship - Q3: Join a cross-functional sprint team that works across research, discovery, ops, strategy, and delivery across the full lifecycle. We run in agile cycles, shaping and improving our own process as we go.
• Tech Fleet - Data Engineering Program Design: Tech Fleet is expanding beyond UX and product management to support growing demand for data skills. Help design future training pathways for Data Engineering, Data Analysis, and Analytics programs.
• Tech Fleet - QA the Platform: Tech Fleet just built and launched a full platform, https://techfleet.network, and it's in pilot. During this time we’re building and fixing bugs. Support quality assurance efforts for the Tech Fleet platform as we continue improving performance, reliability, and user experience.

All the client and internal project applications are now open on our platform. If you don’t have an account yet, please create one or log in to apply.

Volunteer Role Openings

Marketing Lead: Tech Fleet is seeking a marketing lead to shape and drive our marketing strategy and execution. This is a hands-on volunteer role with real ownership—help define how we show up and grow our presence.

What you’ll do: Build the marketing strategy and execute across channels.

Key skills: Marketing strategy, content writing, social media (LinkedIn), brand messaging, and analytics.

Bonus: Email marketing, basic design (Canva/Figma), or nonprofit/community experience.

🗓️Upcoming Events

Weekly Community Onboarding

New to Tech Fleet?

Join our weekly onboarding session to learn about our programs, opportunities, and community.

Observe Live Projects

Want to learn how Tech Fleet projects operate? Our Observer Program allows members to attend project meetings, learn agile practices, and gain insight into team collaboration before joining future projects.

Observe our agile teams in action here:

📣 June Announcements

Help Shape the Leadership Research

If you are an experienced team leader and would like to contribute to the ongoing research of the Membership Experience Team into professional growth, leadership, and team development, please get in touch. There’s no right or wrong answer, we’re just looking for honest experiences and thoughtful feedback.

Help us Improve our Platform

Our platform continues to evolve based on community feedback. Have an idea, suggestion, or issue you'd like us to know about? We'd love to hear from you.

Recent Project Teammates - Fill Out This Survey!

If you participated in a team project or training within the past 5 months, we’d love your feedback. Please take a few minutes to complete our short survey and help us continue improving the training experience for everyone.

🤲 Support Tech Fleet

You Can Make a Difference

Tech Fleet is a volunteer-run nonprofit with a mission to develop people-first leadership and empowered teams across the world. We depend on community support. Please contribute here, and share with others you know who might support our work!

💌 Stay Connected

Thank you for being part of the Tech Fleet community.

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