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laurent_fournier2
Contributor

Greetings everybody,

14 years now, I have seen many different kind of persons try to build a career as ABAP/4 developers. Others managed to find their way and became very good developers and others are still trying without success. But what is the element that is crucial in order to have the ability to build a successful career around ABAP/4 development ? First of all, let's be honest. You must like what you are doing. Personally I can say that I'm passionate with my job. If you are trying to build a career in SAP just for the money , you will eventually fail. I believe that this rule applies in general, not only for SAP. Especially for the development area, I believe that the business knowledge and understanding is the key that makes the difference between a good and a not so good programmer.For me, it's not just a document with technical specifications describing what the program that I will develop must do. It's a bit beyond that. The question that I always do before starting to develop an application is : " What's the business requirement/process that the program will support? What do you want to do with the program that you are asking me to create?". And I always trying to discuss and understand exactly the business need. Knowing the answer to this question will help me build my application based on the business side, not on the technical side. Developing an application based on the business requirement can help you in many different ways :

First of all, you will identify gaps in the logic that most probably the functional consultant that have written the document haven't identified. Also, you will have the ability to think "outside of the box" and develop your program with a way that can leave spaces for improvement or additions/changes in the future.You will have the ability to work autonomously meaning that when you know and understand the business requirement you can create , test and validate your application in a very high degree without the need of a functional consultant. Finally, you will eventually deliver a complete piece of work knowing that the only possible fault will be minor bugs.

Development as you probably are aware is much more than knowing the statements, the syntax and the way to build an application. It's about to understand exactly what purpose the application will serve. It's about to write a code that it's build on pure and solid logic, not to build a code that does a bunch of things without any reason just to display the desired result.( I have seen that many many times... ). It's not a problem if you don't know something. It's a problem if you cannot or you don't have the way to find the answer...

Personally , I'm in the side that believes that good knowledge of ABAP/4 plus good knowledge of business processes is much much better than great knowledge of ABAP/4 only.

This post is more a poll than a regular post.Comments are welcome regarding your opinion..

Regards,

LF.

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