In this issue:
LeanIX is an Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) tool that was acquired by SAP few years ago. Enterprise Architects are not “a Basis guy on steroids”; they are people who collect data about everything in the company’s IT landscape and then have meetings with stakeholders about synergizing business transformation strategy. Or possibly fighting dragons. That part isn’t quite clear.
Some people out there have heard the new buzzword and are asking if learning LeanIX would help propel their SAP career into the Scrooge McDuck gold-diving territory. Well, if you’re not an enterprise architect, then learning an EAM tool will not make you one any more than using a knife would make you a surgeon.
But for those genuinely curious about things, there is a very decent free course about LeanIX from SAP. What is mind-blowing for the SAP world is that the course also includes a link to a free demo environment. Even though it’s “read-only,” you’re free to poke around and see the tool in all its glory. And this isn’t some lousy doxed demo of the least interesting part (Signavio, cough); it’s the real McCoy. It feels like I should barely whisper about it, because otherwise Big SAP Daddy might find out and take it away. So, let’s keep it our little secret. Only for Platinum Plus subscribers. JP
It's Clean Core Crazy Days around here. We've touched on it in Nerdletter Talk, we did a deep dive on a recent Nerdcast, and we hit it with a piece in the last issue. Permit me one more indulgence on this theme.
There's a layer of bullshit that can get wrapped around good ideas. As technical guidance for SAP nerds, "clean core" makes a lot of sense. As marketing and sales guidance blasting out from whatever SAP sales drone mouth is nearest, "CLEAN CORE" morphed into something like propaganda. I talk to customers who have had the idea drilled into them that the only real CLEAN CORE is one on SAP BTP Premium Platinum HyperZ Xtreme Edition.
Consult the nearest pedant who has read the white papers - that's just not true. Further, when I read the latest clean core guidance paper…I actually get warm fuzzies. Good ol' ALV, SAPscript, SmartForms, and other classic ABAP artifacts get promoted to clean core status! (Yes, there's nuance there. See above videos.) Nerds trying to figure out an S/4 strategy for their custom code get some assurance that there's a middle ground between ugly 1998-vintage code and Mega AI BTP.
SAP has listened to feedback, looked at the marketplace, and tuned the knobs to much better settings on their recommendations. If they can avoid marketing and sales bullshit wrappers, this will be a good thing for customers. PM
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It’s an old joke among JavaScript developers that there's a new JS framework every month. SAP seems to be catching the same bug, with “frameworks” coming out of nowhere. Some of them are arguably not frameworks at all, at least not in the sense that ALV is a framework for ABAP developers.
That doesn’t mean they’re useless though. Case in point: the SAP BTP Guidance framework. It currently lives in the SAP Discovery Center and offers a collection of methodologies, reference architectures, and guides. The collection of guides for developers, architects, and other professionals is quite impressive on its own. If calling this a “framework” helps SAP to make more of these, I say: godspeed. JP
Lots of chirping about this MIT study finding that 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing. As resident Boring Enterprise Nerds AI Kool-Aid Dork, I have two reactions, and they both start with "of course".
Of course 95% of pilots are failing. Here's the key point about that number: "only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools reach production" (emphasis mine). It's the enterprise technology departments who haven't figured out how to deliver just yet. The major AI labs and their tools are really good, because that's their specialty. Would anyone reading this rather have an internal IT-developed spreadsheet tool than Excel? The whole AI thing is brand new to everyone, so it makes complete sense that only the labs who have heavily invested in it can make useful things.
Of course 90% of employees use LLMs regularly (see section 3.3). Most writeups about this study are missing this crucial point: "While official enterprise initiatives remain stuck on the wrong side of the GenAI Divide, employees are already crossing it through personal AI tools." It's a conversation-shaped human knowledge agglomeration, with general applicability across just about anything involving text. But that applicability is fickle and best mitigated by having back-and-forth conversations. Most people who successfully use LLMs in general-purpose duties do so by directly addressing a model, not by trying to wrap 150 enterprise-y things around it. PM
Rambo movies were popular on the USSR videotape black market, where translators frequently took creative liberties. I only found out recently that the movie I knew as Rambo: Second Blood is actually called Rambo: First Blood Part II. I like “Second Blood” better, though - clearly a missed opportunity.
Anyway, Rambo is not the only one who had to return to the jungle. Exactly 80 Nerdletter issues ago, we ran a story about the learning frustrations of SAP developers. Three years later, what has changed?
On the plus side, the awkward ABAP development model for Fiori is gone, and ABAP RAP is king now. That has its own learning challenges, though, with “forget what we told you before, there is a new type of CDS view in town!” in every release.
openSAP is gone (I still miss the discussions we’ve had during the courses). SAP Community is more dead than alive. Where does one even go these days to express their learning frustrations?
The main issue raised by the original post is still there: lack of realistic use cases and examples. I ran into it this year on an SAP EWM project: the examples stopped exactly before the thing we actually needed.
As the meme goes, “modern problems require modern solutions.” My 2025 wishlist for SAP developer learning would be more and better code examples (not just trivial stuff) and shorter, more concise guides.
The “this is how you’ve done this before, and this is how we can do it now/better” format (similar to ADT FAQ or Steampunkification) is super helpful for experienced developers. And while there are many “guides” already, why are they 100+ pages long, dammit? Long form has its place, but sometimes you just need to quickly find where the goodies or landmines are.
What’s your learning frustration? Let’s shout into the void together - at least it’s therapeutic. JP
Ghost jobs, where employers post fake job openings for reasons other than hiring, are on the rise. I have heard stories from numerous people encountering this phenomenon. This happens to them during a job search, which is a hard enough time to get through.
I came across this story of a guy trying to do something about it. He’s put together a proposed bill, the “Truth in Job Advertising and Accountability Act”, which sets US federal guidelines for posting accurate information in job postings. I am not a lawyer so I can’t endorse the legal framework one way or the other - but it seems like one of those things with good intentions that unscrupulous employers will find weasel ways to work around. Or if the penalty is low enough to cynically justify the information gain, maybe companies will just take the risk.
I don’t know what the right answer is, but here’s what I do know: if you do this, you suck. PM
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