Today I crossed my review comments for the Apprenticeship Patterns which I wrote back in 2009. I wrote a blog entry back at that time about My long road. Reflecting back over the past – maybe – 3 years, I noticed something I wanted to write about: alternatives to apprenticeships – most of them I came across at my current employer it-agile. I remember that we discussed the topic of apprenticeships a few weeks ago at the local software craftsmanship user group meeting in Münster. We found that the apprenticeship model does not fit well into Germany’s working model in the IT industry. So, we tried to come up with alternatives. Here are the ones I have seen implemented at different companies: Mentoring and Peer-Groups.