10 best practices to be a successful SAP ABAP developer
Successful and resourceful SAP ABAP developer
ABAP / ABAP OO development is very important to address any solution gap, RICEF or custom development in any SAP project. I think it is very important to know many different programming aspects during a SAP implementation project and to follow certain guidelines that can make a SAP ABAP professional very successful in their career.
Steps to be an efficient SAP ABAP programmer or SAP technical team leader
1. Review business requirements and write functional specification
The first part of any ABAP development project begins with meeting the end users or business experts and understanding the business requirements that need to be implemented in the SAP system during the realization phase. A better approach is to run workshops to meet all business requirements. Make sure that if any SAP function consultants are involved, they are also involved in meetings. After all the business requirements have been collected, a detailed functional specification will be written by a SAP functional consultant or business expert. Review the functional specification until the document has all the details, the different business scenarios, and the expected objectives clearly defined. A well-defined functional specification should contain UML diagrams and test case scenarios. It is important to have an official approval of the functional specification before proceeding with design and development.
2. Review ABAP development standards
Ideally, your SAP project manager or ABAP development manager should have created a scheduling standards and guidelines document. Please review this document to follow the naming conventions for function modules, classes, dictionary objects, software components, namespaces and proxies (if using SAP XI / PI), program input / output parameters, etc., just to name a few. Following the project guidelines helps you maintain a consistent coding approach and also helps other functional and technical analysts read and debug your code. The ABAP object naming must begin with Z if it will be migrated to the SAP production system and Y if it will not be migrated to the production system.
3. Write and review test cases
Test case documents are written by SAP business experts or functional consultants on most SAP implementation projects. But in some SAP implementation projects, a programmer may be required to write test cases. Before writing a test case, review the functional specification document thoroughly and review the written test case with business users or functional consultants. Get an approval as mentioned in most of the steps in this article. As ABAP Development Manager for a variety of SAP implementation projects, my goal has been to keep my team motivated and always cover the team against any scope change in development tasks. Having an approval in every phase of a SAP custom development or improvement tasks always helps the SAP implementation team and the project management team to stay in sync, which is vital to complete the SAP implementation on time and on budget.
Four. Write and review technical design specifications
Read the functional specification and list all the development objects that would be required to implement the required functionality in the SAP system. The first step is to draw a flow chart and review it with technical and business experts. The technical design document should include a technical description, a list of new database objects, ABAP objects that can be reused, a data model, and a class diagram (if ABAP OO classes are used). It is highly recommended to have a preliminary prototype in the sandbox (development system if there is no SAP sandbox available) if the development being done is complex or if the final product is not well defined. Then you should review your prototype with functional experts and business users. Make sure the ABAP development team leader or manager approves the prototype. If the effort required to complete the ABAP scheduling task is not presented and approved by senior project management, then this would be a good time to get approval of the development estimate and schedule.
5. Specification Realization – ABAP Development
During this step, you will create development objects and deploy the code to the SAP development system. Before you begin, if the prototype was made in the sandbox, review the prototype and the design specification. Remember that the quality and reuse of existing ABAP objects are more important than strictly following the design specifications. Determine which existing dictionary objects can be reused for this topic. If you need to create new classes or dictionary objects, make sure these objects can be extended and reused for other development tasks. It may take extra effort to develop objects that are reusable and flexible. This one-time effort to build reusable ABAP objects during the course of a development project can potentially save a lot of work for programming similar objects that might otherwise use already built objects. Review your approach with a SAP technical team leader or development manager on your project before deviating from the technical design specification and implementing your own ideas. If you are involved in tasks related to SAP XI (now Process Integration) or creating business services, this is the best area where you could reuse existing objects. Review the message types that already exist within your SAP business unit and see if the existing messages can be expanded with new fields. Check with the team leader if communication should be synchronous or asynchronous before generating proxies.
6. SAP development best practices
SAP ABAP (or JAVA if working in SAP Netweaver) development best practices should be followed throughout the project development life cycle. Although this is up to your technical project manager, I have personally maintained a checklist for developers on my team on all projects and have been very successful in delivering high quality results on all development tasks. Here are some best practices that are worth adapting in your project. Check if you adhere to all the naming conventions outlined in the programming standards set for your deployment project. Include comments in your code to allow someone else to easily understand your programs. This is particularly useful when you are working in large teams and multiple people are working on the same objects. Make sure you have verified user authorization if you are creating transactions or web user interfaces that will require human interaction. Verify that you do not have ABAP code segments that can affect performance, such as nested loops, nested select statements (use views if you want), excess database commits (lingering objects or buffering alternatives can be a good choice), etc. Field symbols are a great asset when it comes to processing internal tables and also variables with unknown data types that are resolved at run time. Field symbols are very similar to the concept of using pointers in the OO programming landscape. Check if all exceptions are handled and if error messages are accurately communicated to end users. As an ABAP programmer, it should be well accepted by now that it shouldn’t be okay for short dumps to occur. This all happens in unknown special case scenarios, short dumps need to be fixed.
7. ABAP code performance and reviews
As an ABAP programmer, you should test your code after completion for all possible scenarios. Verify that the final results are the same as those expected in the documented test cases. Perform an ABAP runtime analysis to verify the performance of your code. Seek suggestions from your technical team leader or manager on how to improve code performance if you notice red flags during runtime analysis. Schedule a formal code review with your mentor or a senior ABAP developer once development is complete and tested by all responsible developers. Review and retest your code with the desired result as documented in the test scripts. Remember that code reviews are not to find flaws in your programming, they will only make you a better ABAP developer and maintain consistency.
8. Documentation
Be sure to write end-user documents with an overview of the functionality or enhancement upon completion. Include screenshots whenever possible. Prepare the documentation keeping in mind that an end user unfamiliar with your deliverable can read the document and test the functionality. Include contact information in this document so that users can easily contact the SAP technical team with any questions.
9. User acceptance tests
Now that your ABAP coding is complete and reviewed by technical experts, it’s time for business users to perform a formal user acceptance test. UAT testers will verify if the output meets business process requirements and suggest improvements or modifications to the delivered functionality. After completing these fixes or modifications, you must request a formal approval of the functionality.
10. Migration to test system and SAP production system
QA engineers will test your functionality in the SAP QA environment to verify that everything works in its delivered functionality as tested during user acceptance testing. Additionally, any issues in transporting your ABAP objects through SAP systems will be identified and addressed during this step. If no issues are found, your shipments will be approved for migration to the SAP production system in the next shipment cycle.
You have just learned how to be an efficient SAP ABAP developer or, for example, a high-quality senior ABAP expert from specification writing to implementation in production system. Use this article as a guide as there are many more things you need to improve to be a good ABAP programmer that cannot be covered in a short article like this. You can always contact me with any suggestions or ideas you may be looking for for your SAP implementation.