All of us start our career as a newbie, struggle to understand the technology, get help from seniors, public forums, curse our mentors for not spending enough time with us for spoon feeding (Especially the ones who just passed out from college and started their career 😛 ).

     But, as the time passes, we do become expert in the area on which we work and move to next level to help out others. This professional life cycle never ends and every one would be part of this cycle. I hope most of you would agree with my thought 😉

I feel, at any point in time, every individual is a fresher and expert at the same time. If you know something, that means that there are 100 new things on your way to challenge you 😛 . This world is so big that, one life time is not enough to learn micro part of this world (Be it work related/outside work) ❗

So, learning is a never ending process. Some people might be fast at learning something and some may not.

Everyone has their own way of working. I would like to blog about how I mentor my juniors in SAP. Rather, this is how I was mentored by my seniors which helped me to grow quickly in my career both technically and professionally. I would like to pass on the same ways of working to my team.

So, here we go…

If someone approach me for a help, I have set of questions for them before I jump into solution. So am I 😈 .

1. Do you understand the scenario both from technology and business perspective?

    It is very important to understand an issue/requirement from business perspective. Once we know the concept, mapping to a software solution is not a big deal.

2. Can you relate the issue/requirement to a real time example?

Best way to get deep dive in to basics and remember the concept forever is to relate the scenario to a real time example. It might not be possible in all the cases. But, definitely it is possible in most of the cases for sure.

3. Did you browse through SPRO path (If it is related to customizing) and read the IMG documentation?

Once we understand the concept and relate to a real time scenario, searching proper config node in SPRO is a simple task for any one.

I always suggest to read the IMG documentation and understand it before entering into the config.

4. Never try to remember t-codes!

I suggest never try to remember any config t-code. Try to understand the business process, map it in SPRO to see at what level the config might come. Start search in that area. After few months, you can tell the SPRO path hierarchy for a change even without SAP screen open in front. Isn’t this 😎

5. Did you try to replicate the issue in test system?

When an issue is assigned to us, most of the time, we try to straight away jump into issue n look for solution. But, if we try to replicate the issue in test systems, we can learn business process too.

6. Did you try to Google out yourself in help.sap.com/SCN/Any other SAP forum?

After all above steps, still if solution is not found, next step is to Google (The weapon of any software engineer 😆 ).

Still stuck??? Seniors are there to help any time 😉 . If seniors also don’t find the solution through same ground work, next step is to approach experts in the area/post in public forums like SCN.

Last but not least, spend daily some time in SCN. Start answering questions, read articles and inspiring blogs, interact with experts.

To start with, people feel bad about this approach feeling that they are not getting the real help they are expecting. But, after working out on above points for a while, one would understand the importance of doing this activity and how this builds up the conceptual understanding and how a business scenario can be mapped in to SAP configuration.

Sometimes, I do get scolding at back end 🙁 . But, after doing this exercise, people do understand the importance and how it help to grow one’s knowledge level.

Of course, at the end everyone agree that this is the most effective way of learning and they are happy with the way mentoring was done 😎

I am more than happy to learn from many experts here about different approaches being followed ℹ . Your comments on this blog are most welcome 🙂

Best Regards,

Vinod Vemuru