Hold on! Irrespective if you are an ABAPer (like me) or not, you didn't read the title of this blog post wrongly. I would like to share with all of you a reflection I'm having for days and I'm sure that your opinion about it might be totally different than all the ones I'm hoping to have in the comments section.
As a ABAPer, usually when you receive a functional specification, the work done to understand the business requirement and propose a high level technical solution is already done (or should be). Who creates the specification, should have both business and technical understanding to be able to link both different worlds. But whither does technical solution should go in such cases? I'm not talking about things like "the more the better". I'm talking about ABAP knowledge limits for the ones who are not ABAPers.
First, apart from being a connection, what is the most common case in SAP market: a functional being a functional or a technical who becomes a functional (and as a consequence have a technical background)?
I've heard from many ABAPers in a variety of ways that functionals should know how to perform things like: debugging, database selection, object orientation and so on. And what about functionals' opinion? Do they think that all these things are really necessary or there is a single responsibility of ABAPers?
Do you think ABAP knowledge for a non ABAPers can be valuable to perform their jobs? Will this result in a better specification or generate any other positive result?
It's very clear that ABAPers should have knowledge in SAP modules. It's very rare to find a ABAP position which will just have technical prerequisites. Is the opposite true? Should it be?
In my opinion a functional should know ABAP's power but not it's details. If a Google Map would generate value in a program to be created, the responsible for creating the specification should know that ABAP can do that! A non ABAP should also know that a module pool with two screens can take 10x more time to be built then two reports which call each other.
But what do you think? Should a non ABAPer know how to debug for example? I prepared a short list of skills which can be in scope of non ABAPers or not. I'd like from you to give your thoughts about them.
- Debug
- Database Selection
- Procedural x ABAP Objects
- Definition of DDIC Objects Structures
- Developments Estimatives
- How to find enhancements
- How to interpret ABAP Help
- How to interpret BAPI's behavior
- Define specifications without an ABAPer help.
Beyond this list, what other technical skills do you think a non ABAPer should be able to do? Why? Which are just good to have? Please, don't forget to say if you are a ABAPer or not in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
