How do SAP users see ABAPers?

Until now I have never written any ABAP programs. I hope some day to have an opportunity of doing that, as a complete SAP guru.

It should be possible, because my programming skills are strong and I am a key user of SAP PM.

I have been using SAP since 2008. I started carefully, intimidated by a system which looked to a beginner like a black box. Gradually I learned to use different transactions in SAP Plant Maintenance, the few I was able to access. Some of them were absolutely original. Later, in 2010, I had the opportunity to be trained by an expert in SAP.

I didn’t become an expert at once, but I learned a lot from him, such as how to manage an effective process of Job plan optimisation. He introduced me to global methods and SAP techniques. That was interesting, but I didn’t want to stop my learning at that level.

As I see it, the people playing with codes on ABAP are those who have already done other projects in C++, VBA, or other computer programming languages. They need to be creative and intelligent, and they need to stay close to the people who are using SAP every day so they know their problems and can help to solve them.

The main goal of an ABAPer’s job is to assist his colleagues or his management. People don’t like to spend too much time in front of their computers. If something basic can be done by the computers instead of by colleagues, there will be less workers complaining about SAP.

What do I want? Simply to improve my knowledge of SAP so that instead of using existing windows I can create new windows. I want to put my code into the system.

How can I do that?

This article by Frédéric Cloux took part in the joint contest, which SAP Expert ran together with PACKT Publishing.