Jeremy Neander

Foundry

Over the course of my apprenticeship thus far, Colin and I have been using Artisan to track the stories driving my projects and other assignments. The talented Mike Ebert, another apprentice before me at 8th Light, has been working on an apprenticeship tracking application to fill many of the needs shared by apprentices and mentors. It was recently made available for user testing by 8th Lighters, and I've been looking to incorporate it as much as possible into my iteration workflow.

At first, I had the wrong idea about how to use it. There seemed to be some overlap in intention between Artisan and Mike's app, Foundry. The confusion stemmed from assuming that both applications were meant to track the same information. As Mike explained, this is not the case.

Artisan was developed to track the individual stories comprising project iterations. He then described Foundry as a tool for tracking assignments within an apprenticeship. For instance, an apprentice might be assigned reading, blog posts, and a project or two. Whereas Artisan will aid in breaking down larger projects, Foundry will help to manage the full gamut of an apprentice's commitments.

To provide a unique value to the users, there are embedded feedback and collaboration tools for mentors and their apprentices, as well as the beginnings of several other very beneficial features. It shows great promise. I look forward to seeing it develop.