feat: Added ADR for academies relationships

docs/decisions/0008-academies-relationship-with-content.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+Academies relationship with content libraries
+=============================================
+
+Status
+------
+
+Draft
+
+
+Context
+-------
+Academies are off the shelf, subject-specific curations of the edX/2U catalog and a variety of services to create
+a more transformative, focused, rigorous learning experience within a specific vertical. Where academies differ
+from content libraries(e.g. edX/2u catalog) is their scope and focus. Academies are a larger investment made by
+a company that is committed to developing a specific set of core competencies within its workforce as a
+competitive advantage. Examples of the types of features that could separate an academy from a content library
+include (but are not limited to):
+
+-- Coaching.
+-- Pre- and post-test competency assessments.
+-- Projects / capstones.
+-- Events.
+-- Multiple varieties of content: courses, programs, videos, articles.
+-- Cohort/group experiences.
+
+We will build a series of features that an Academy can support, with the tooling to turn features on and off.
+From a market-facing perspective, this will allow us to deliver two distinct looking offerings: a basic,
+“off the shelf” academy that can be supplied to any standard contract, and a “premium” academy that appeals to
+customers looking to run more comprehensive programs and spend much more per learner.
+
+
+Solution Approach
+-----------------
+The Academy will have the following broad software modules:
+
+1: A metadata component to define the edx learning content membership in an Academy.
+2: A progress component to track learner progress in an Academy. 
+3: An event management suite for scheduling, managing academy related events.
+
+All of the above will have associated user facing and backend systems. As part of MVP, the first module above
+will be developed.
+
+
+Decision
+--------
+From a code perspective, an Academy has many similarities to how an Enterprise is stored and managed.
+The Enterprise Catalog service has a lot of code for associating enterprises with learning content and
+creating indexes in Algolia. Academies can reuse all of this body of work already present in the enterprise-catalog. 
+
+Each Academy will have a many-to-many relationship to the enterprise catalogs. A many-to-many relationship is
+necessary since academies can span enterprises and catalogs. Academy uuids will get indexed into
+Algolia via the existing indexing routines in enterprise-catalog repository
+
+
+Consequences
+------------
+
+A large amount of Algolia indexing code in the enterprise-catalog repository will be reused, thus reducing the
+time to market. This also entails a tight coupling to the enterprise catalog. 
+
+
+Alternatives considered
+-----------------------
+
+We considered adding Academies to the edx-discovery search, similar to what was implemented for Pathways. We also
+looked at creating a many to many relationship of an Academy and CatalogQuery. Creating a brand new edx-Academies
+service was also evaluated. All of these approaches trigger significant complexity to the MVP. Once we are confident
+that the MVP is a success and have a more refined path for the premium version of the product, we can re-evaluate
+the above decision and consider these alternatives again.