Create Fiori Capability Maturity

[wilbert_sison2]

Application development as a practice has encountered a lot of changes over the years.Within SAP, the changes have been quite big with the introduction of language components for CDS, Fiori and RAP.Further, the introduction of BTP and changes from NEO into Cloud Foundry are additional considerations.

When I worked to create the Fiori development capability within a large retail chain in Australia, I found that while there was capability within people, the expertise levels and the appetite levels differ greatly.  There were some experts in javascript and Visual Studio, there were experts in ABAP, some with experience in Fiori via WEBIDE and a few full-stack Fiori developers with extensive experience in BTP and BAS.

This provided different ways of attacking the same problems and potential maintenance issues in the future.

In order to establish a common way of working, I dedicated some time for the team to establish :

• common tooling
• application deployment standards (manifest, package, versioning, linting)
• and also collectively study an example viable product (a Fiori app).

The last exercise allowed us a common understanding around expectations on the approach to development since there are a few technical ways to deliver them.  It establishes a common look and feel.  And it provides knowledge uplift for those who were not yet fully up-to-speed.

However, this left us with some artifacts which were in flight prior to the exercise. We had to work hard to convert or minimize issues with them.

The exercise allowed us a next-step maturity level on Fiori application development capability.  It provided a baseline for creating common libraries for specific suites of applications that require the same look and feel. It enabled rapid development with standardized coding artifacts.