IS THE INTERNSHIP PAID?

The introductory Internship is not paid, but once you become a Senior Intern, it is a paid internship.

ARE THERE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF INTERNSHIPS AT AGILITY ACADEMY?

YES, there is the introductory Internship in which you are primarily a learner, and mentee. This internship is approximately 45 hours long, and concludes whenever you pass your Salesforce Administrator's Certification Exam (a globally recognized technology credential) and our Internal Agility Academy Intern Graduation Exam (a test of your basic skills on understanding our particular Scrum Methodology, and the operational norms for Senior Interns and Consultants).

Once you pass those two examinations, you will be promoted to a Senior Intern position. In this role you will continue learning and being mentored, as well as real-world involvement in active development projects. It is designed to be flexible to accommodate your other obligations (High School, Running Start, College, Sports, etc.).

WHAT DOES THE INTERNSHIP COST?

At this there will be no cost for the internship. This may change for future interns (those that start mid-to-late 2022), but we  appreciate that this will be a new experience for you as a learner, and we will be learning as we go from our collective experiences as a school.

WHAT LEARNING ACTIVITIES WILL I DO IN MY INTERNSHIP?

Your internship consists of online, self-paced learning, combined with a weekly check-in with your mentor. While the learning is self paced, and based on the hours you commit to each week; the first week you are in the program, you will be expected to complete at least our first two learning modules.

WHAT TECHNOLOGY DO I NEED TO HAVE TO ENROLL IN AGILITY ACADEMY?

1. A modern Apple or Windows-running laptop or desktop computer (tablets with an attached keyboard can be exceptionally frustrating but usable, and Chromebooks are effective)


2. High Speed Internet access



HOW MANY HOURS A WEEK WILL I NEED TO COMMIT?

Agility Academy's program is largely self-paced. At the end of each week, you will be expected to project the quantity of hours you plan to be involved with Agility Academy efforts for the upcoming week (up to what is allowed by state labor laws for Senior Interns). If your actual hours logged differ significantly from your projection, this will be a topic in your weekly discussion with your mentor. We know that life happens (you or a family member gets sick, a school teacher drops an unexpected assignment on you, etc.) we can handle that. More than anything we desire to communicate clearly, and help you learn good time management and time estimation skills.

AS AN INTERN, WILL I BE INTERACTING WITH ADULTS OUTSIDE OF AGILITY ACADEMY?

NO, none of our interns have direct interaction with adults outside of Agility Academy. As an intern, depending on where you are in the curriculum, you will be taking either written user stories, or pre-recorded video calls with clients, and using them in the development process. Any questions you have will be relayed between you and the client via your Agility Academy Mentor. Any "presentation" to an outside client will be pre-recorded by you and shared by the Mentor with the client.

WHAT KIND OF THINGS WILL I LEARN IN MY INTERNSHIP?

Our initial Internship is approximately 45 hours of self-directed online learning, with the expectation of one 30 min Zoom web conference with your mentor each week. You will learn foundational skills both in general application management and on how to make modifications to the Salesforce platform.

AS A SENIOR INTERN OR CONSULTANT, IS THERE A UTILIZATION GOAL?

As you work more in the world of application development or consulting you will hear a great deal about "Utilization Goals" and "Bench Time". It IS NOT a fun way of getting paid, and it rarely benefits the worker. We want to operate differently, and with clear expectations that benefit both the learner (you) and the school (Agility Academy) equally.

We will operate in a process that for each activity, your mentor and you will jointly estimate the amount of time it will take to accomplish. If it takes you less time to do that activity, to the level communicated and expected, then that's great you get paid on the full estimate (i.e. you get rewarded for accurate efficiency). If it takes you longer, you still get paid on the full estimate, and any additional hours needed get logged into your "learning time" allocation, which is unpaid.

I AM UNDER 18, AND ALREADY KNOW A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE (JAVASCRIPT, PYTHON, ETC.) SHOULD I STILL ATTEND AGILITY ACADEMY?

ABSOLUTELY! Salesforce is designed with two types of feature / application development a) Declarative, what many people call "point-and-click configuration" and b) Programmatic, which is what we call "pure code" and looks like any other modern programming language.

Programmatic development on the Salesforce platform follows the MVC or "Model-View-Controller" development model, and uses a SQL-like database language called SOQL, a Java-like Controller language called Apex, and for the View uses either a HTML-like language called VisualForce, or more recently, uses JavaScript and HTML. These languages and model will mirror any best-practice aligned work you will do in any development environment, regardless of language.

In addition, and probably most importantly, no matter what language you write in, there are best practices around Development Operations (DevOps) that many programs don't teach developer; that we focus on at Agility Academy. Things like: Can you lead a discovery call with a client or group of stakeholders to understand what they REALLY want an application to do? Can you break down any requirement and map it into a business process document, write concise user stories to define all functionality desired, and get agreement on that plan from the client or stakeholder(s)? Can you QA test someone else's build, demo it to the client, and then release it to their Production environment in a healthy way? All of these things we know, from painful personal experience, are not traditionally taught even in 4 year Computer Science degrees. We will not only teach you the theory, but mentor you through doing it in REAL-WORLD scenarios enough times that it will become ingrained in your personal process. These are skills that are not usually gained until someone has decades of development experience, and will make you MUCH more marketable than developers 10 years your senior.