ABAP - What to learn next

[former_member707408]

Hello all,

More than 7 years working on ABAP and having worked extensively on Report, Smartform, SAPScript, BDC, BAdI, User/Customer Exit, Dynpro, Enhancement, ALV (not much into ABAP OO though) across multiple modules now I am at a juncture where the company is in planning phase for upgrade to SAP S/4 HANA (no idea what is the time-line for the project completion) from current SAP ECC 6.0.

We (at least us ABAPers at the company) don't know whether it will be an On-Premise or Cloud Edition that the company will decide on.

So here is what I need some guidance with:

• How would ABAP role change pre-during-and-after S/4 HANA upgrade?
• How different the role/involvement of an ABAPer be across implementation scenarios (On-premise vs Cloud)?
• What should I start with and what would my learning path be under these two implementation scenarios?
• And lastly, what additional (non-ABAP) skill can I target on acquiring?

[former_member1716]

Hello learnity,

Recommend you to do the following to clear all your doubts:

1) As a first step recommend you to go through the ABAP Journey prescribed by SAP in the link ABAP JOURNEY.

2) To know the the sequence of steps for a technical conversion go through the Open Sap Courses suggested below:

--> S4 HANA SUCCESS

--> KEY TOPICS FOR TECHNICAL CONVERSION

3) Regarding your question on NON ABAP skill, recommend you to have a complete clear understanding on the functional concepts. This Should help you to propel along your career.

Regards!

[former_member707408]

Thanks Satish, this is really helpful.

[sanilbhandari]

Hello learnity

I would agree to what has already been pointed out. An ABAP Journey as listed does help and guide a lot. However, S/4HANA journey is about starting the digital transformation and there are immense possibilities to learn things other than traditional ABAP.

I have a colleague who has about 8 years of ABAP exp having worked on ECC and S/4HANA. However, he has now picked up skills in Python and JAVA as well. What next, he is developed applications which help business do things, which are not even possible in ERP like checking for VAT NO using a web crawler and using NLP heavily to predict errors in transactional data using HANA PL.

So I would definitely suggest to pick up new skills especially around Python and Java in addition to traditional ABAP and look for innovations, which can add a lot of business value.

Thanks & Regards

Sanil Bhandari

[former_member707408]

Thanks Sanil.

[maheshpalavalli]

learnity, you can select one of the answer as correct answer and close the thread.