What Do You Do?

[moshenaveh]

Hello Everyone,

In my opinion, Empathy is an essential foundation of any online community that wishes to thrive. Empathy is the glue that keeps us together and makes every community interaction a lot more considerate and user friendly to all members involved.

I believe that the best way to encourage and help empathy spread across our community is if we connect and familiarize with one and other.

Therefore, I would like to invite you to join the What Do You Do (#WDYD) community initiative. #WDYD is your opportunity to share with everyone your role in the SAP world/ecosystem while engaging a lively conversation with fellow community members who want to learn more about the most interesting projects you've worked on, best practices, creativity and innovation and whatever you feel like sharing about what you do.

Joining this initiative is very simple:

1. Submit an answer to the question "What Do You DO" in this thread. The answer should contain a short introduction of yourself and your professional background/experience.
2. Optional: End your introduction by @ mentioning fellow community members inviting them to join this initiative while asking them one of the following questions: /What was your first step in the SAP world?/What do you enjoy most about your job?/How do you keep your skills up to date (what training/courses/reading do you do)?/Where do you see your career future with SAP?/What do you think are the challenges in your area?/What advice would you give someone beginning their career?/What do you wish you had done differently?/What did you do in your first day at work/Who inspired you the most/Do you have any specific thought leaders in the community who you follow/What was the project you enjoyed the most and why?/Feel free to make-up your own questions/ (Thanks a lot to @Colleen Hebbertf or coming-up with some these questions)
3. After you've posted your answer paste the link that you will get under the "share" button. Then use the link and this #WDYDSC hashtag to invite your friends on social media to read your answer and interact with you

Once you join other community members will continue the conversation by asking you more questions. In order to be responsive please be sure to follow this thread and activate your Email notifications.

Some additional important guidelines:

* Please contact me if you wish to champion your own topic related What Do You DO question. This way we can make sure there are no duplications and I can support you by giving you visibility in this thread and other locations.

* All questions/threads participating in the #WDYD initiative most only be tagged with the "Careers" topic in order not to disrupt the content flow of other community Q&A activity.

* Please up-vote answers you like as it will make it easier for others to find high quality discussions.

* Everyone can join! Regardless if you are new to the SAP World or an expert

* Please use comments to ask for clarification on this post and post answers to join according to the intructions provided above.

I would like to kick this off by @ mentioning fellow community members:

julie.plummer

lars.breddemann

caetano.almeida

matt.fraser

petr.solberg

m.lee

michael.appleby

jrgen.lins

denis.konovalov

1005bf8318434f49964a5737c29bb265

felipe.fraga

jeremy.good

ivy.li

matthew.billingham

jelena.perfiljeva2

luisdarui

bernhard.luecke

nicole.geischnek

andreas.holzapfel

ajay.maheshwari

krishnaananth

Former Member

rindia

raz.korn

matthias.wild

[lbreddemann]

I work in the SAP Health team where we are trying to help doctors, researchers and patients to get a much better outcome from their treatments. The approach that we took here makes the bet on data integration and easy data analytics and access.

HANA based systems like CancerLinQ that we built together with ASCO, already have a great impact on Cancer treatment research and practice. Questions like "for patients like this one, what treatments actually worked best across all practices in the US?" can now be answered in a few seconds.
This kind of technology application - literally helping people to get better - provides more satisfaction than anything else I tried within SAP so far. SAP has invested heavily in this (and keeps on doing so) and it does make me proud to be part of this and to know that my efforts make a difference.

My part in this is to work with customers and keep them happy and successful as they go - my direct team is the SAP Health RIG, which makes our job very similar to what @Michael.Appleby described.
Technology wise this is a rather diverse field - anything from free-text doctor's letters to VCF file based genome samples needs to be integrated to provide the data access needed.

Obviously, I also spend quite some time with HANA related communities, which really is a hobby to me (even though there is the SAP trapezoid next to my name, I've got no goals or targets attached to this).

In my non-SAP life, I really love movies. Going to the cinema, watching classics at home, or binging on a current fav on Netflix - I like it all 🙂

Recently (ok, it's two years now... that went quickly), I moved from Germany to Australia and now literally have to cross one street to be at the beach, which is really awesome! So far I did try my luck with swimming, stand-up paddling and kayaking and can proudly report, that I'm still alive and probably cleared out the bay from sharks by scaring them away with my lack of balance... *g*. Fun fact: Melbourne, where I live is located in a huge bay and we rarely have shark sightings let alone attacks. Having said that, the very first time I'm out with the kayak, there was a shark sighting, so helicopters patroled to check the beaches. These helicopters, of course, had TV cameras on board, so there was footage of me, paddling away in a clip about shark patrols...

[christoph_hopf]

Hi Lars,

It's great to hear from you as it is quite a long time that you have left the GSC in Vienna. I have to search through Youtube now for this video.

I'm sorry to read that you have to live that near at the beach. I can't image what I would do with all the sand in my house. 😉

Wish you a all the best in Australia!

[lbreddemann]

Thanks, Christoph!

The sand problem is actually real: just used my lunch break for sweeping the backyard again... hard life *cough* 🙂

And you're right: the times in GSC Austria feel like ages ago now. Needless to say, that I always enjoy when I get the opportunity to come by for a visit. Hope to make it back sometime...

About the video: didn't it work for you via the link? The video is titled "SAP and CancerLinQ Improving the Quality of Care" but simply searching for "CancerLinQ" should produce a list of videos, too.

Cheers back to Vienna, you and all the colleagues in GSC Austria!

[moshenaveh]

lars.breddemann

Thanks a lot, this sounds really interesting. It's good we talked because I thought SAP health was the system that hospitals use to manage their patients? Or that's SAP Connected Health Platform ?

https://cancerlinq.org/ Sounds amazing. There is a saying in the Jewish culture that the one that saved one person is like he saved the entire world. And it seems like this project is saving a world. Very moving.

What is your secret of making/keeping yours customers happy? What do you think is most important for them?

[lbreddemann]

"What is your secret of making/keeping yours customers happy? What do you think is most important for them?"

Not sure that there's a huge secret to this. I just try the best I can to move topics forward. Either working myself on e.g. HANA performance/implementation questions or handing them over to someone who can do things when I can't. I try to focus on the desired outcome and work backwards from there.
In my experience, most people that work in projects have a good understanding that not everything always works out as planned - so that's usually not what makes anyone really unhappy. One of the main drivers for that is probably when you got the impression that someone is blocking the project progress, especially by "no action".

So, I try to not be or appear as "no action" and make a point of communicating progress, roadblocks and possible solutions.

Up to now, that approach worked well for me.

As for SAP Health, etc. : SAP Health (=division in SAP/org unit), SAP Connected Health Platform, Medical Research Insights, (="big data" products), and ISH/ISH.med (=industry solutions for hospitals/healhcare). Of course, CHP/MRI and the other new products can, should and are used by hospitals as well.

[DiegoDora]

Hi Lars,

I found what you do absolutely fascinating. Do you have a volunteers program? I'm very passionated about Cancer treatment and the use of technology to help getting the proper treatment to each patient at the right time.

In March of this year we lost my mom due to Acute Myeloid Leukemia, she was only 65 years old and since then I proposed myself to join any group that uses Machine Learning or any other type of technology to help other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers to not lose their loves one to Cancer. I felt that the overall medicine is far behind to effectively eradicate such a complex disease and I want to see in which ways I can help. Sorry to bring such a "heavy" subject into your answer but I see this as a good chance to connect.

It will be wonderful to see many countries around the world uniting forces and consolidating all our knowledge in one project that's available for every doctor single doctor in the world.

That being said, I do have a daily job and many personal projects BUT if I can use some of my spare time in doing something helpful to 'punch cancer in the face' ... I'm very much interested.

Thanks for the reading and once again sorry for bringing such a 'heavily emotional' topic to your post.

Best,

Diego.

[lbreddemann]

Hi Diego

thanks a lot for the very nice feedback. Sorry to hear about your loss - unfortunately that is something more and more people everywhere and also in our team had to experience. In fact, many in the SAP Health team are motivated by similar experiences.

Having said that, we are no doctors and cannot tell the experts what to do. Instead, our approach is to bring our expertise to the table and solve underlying problems, like data integration. That doesn't have the same ring to it as "building a cancer-fighting-AI" but even the best AI is useless without good quality data.
Also, providing an integrated data platform allows for even more than "just" improving cancer care. It's a systematic issue with healthcare providers that data is not available or wrong, whether that's in heart disease treatment or in the orthopaedic surgery. Making correct data easily available and consumable to healthcare professionals can tremendously add to the patient's outcome. A better treatment with lower costs, two important goals, can actually both be achieved simultaneously.

Also thanks for your generous offer of your time. I'm not sure how we could loop in part-time voluntary work, though.

Maybe, as a starter, let me point out some more information on the topic. There are two free mooc courses available for free:

Code of Life - When Computer Science Meets Genetics - link

The Future of Genomics and Precision Medicine - link

Hope you find those interesting.

Cheers,

Lars

[DiegoDora]

hi Lars,

Thanks a lot for your comment and the links that you're sharing with me. I'll be taking this MOOC courses this quarter and looping back to you after for some additional discussions.

Best,

Diego

[ivy_li]

Hi All,

First congratulations for this great initiative hosted by moshe.naveh2, and I am sure this will make our new community well known to more people within or outside SAP.

My office is located in Dalian, China, a very beautiful coastal city. I have been working in SAP Product Support for more than six years.

My expertise product is Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), and I am the expert for SRM administration and SRM pricing, and also familiar with other functionalities within SRM such as catalog, SC/PO, etc.

I began to show my interest in SCN from 2013, and ever got 3 badges for SCN Topic Leaders in SRM space. The passion which pushed me to contribute to our community is that I love to share my knowledge with others, and also take this chance to learn from others.

Now I volunteered to be the moderator of our new SAP Community (SRM tags/CTPs), and doing my best to make SAP Community a more favorable world for our members.

I would like to invite some of my team members to join this initiative:

summer.wang How do you balance your time well between family and work? Since you are a two-kid mom and also a role model in the team (KDE and Nexus)

diana.dai What are you going to do if too much stress from your work? As I know, you have been assigned a lot of roles such as KDE, coach, Nexus, etc.

susan.hou What do you enjoy most from your job? And what do you enjoy most from your personal life? (If you would like to share)

Can't wait for your answers:) and also invite more to join this interesting conversation with your questions!

[moshenaveh]

Thanks a lot ivy.li ! Welcome! Great to read about your community experience.

What was the most creative project you've engaged in your work?

[ivy_li]

A good question for 'Creative' Project. Like my introduction, I like to share knowledge with others, so I devote myself a lot into KM projects, such as Wiki Housekeeping, Troubleshooting Guide, etc. When my experience or skills of solving technical problems are formed into documents and could be spread to others, I feel very happy and satisfied. I love developing from nothing.

moshe.naveh2 What is your career development until now? I am really curious about your career path within SAP.

[diana_dai]

Thanks Ivy for the invitation. I am looking forward to receiving more and more notifications from our new community.

I joint SAP in year 2006. It has been more than 10 years since I work as a support consultant in MM team. I am the nexus of product area MM-PUR, and also have some experiences on the other MM areas, and industry solution Retail. The components are connected by the interfaces that requires strong teamwork. I deeply believe that the knowledge management is important for customers and support engineers.

Getting back to the question 'What are you going to do if too much stress from your work?', I think time management is the key for me. Every morning I take 5 -10 minutes to create a checklist in my head. It includes the tasks that I need to complete in the day. By doing this, most of the tasks will be under control, so they will not make too much stresses in the end. In case I am stuck in any difficulties, I will talk with my buddies in the office. Teamwork is always helpful for solving problems.

I would like to invite my buddies to this initiative:

yang.bai What was the project you enjoyed the most and why?

wendy.xu How do you keep your English language ability up to date?

allen.wang9 How to you keep exercising with losing motivation?

Thank you for the answer in advance!

[ivy_li]

Thanks for sharing your way in time management

and really appreciate your modesty even if you are already the role model in the team~

[summer_wang]

Congratulations for this great initiative and thank you to Ivy for inviting me in this game.

I have worked in PS China MMSRM team for 13 years. I am the Nexus of SRM Purchase order area.

For the question " How do you balance your time well between family and work? Since you are a two-kid mom and also a role model in the team (KDE and Nexus)"

The answer is work as a wonderful team in the SAP and play as a lovely team at home.

During the working hours, it is a big fun for me to take adventure and discover in the SAP code world. The team members helped me a lot in the unknown areas. For us, the great SAP product is something like a devotion.

After working hours, we play cleaning games as team, read and share together as a team.

I would like to ask my colleague yu.feng2, What Obstacles did you have when becoming the expert of UIA and how did you overcome it:)

[ivy_li]

Your attitude to the difficulty in work and life is always appreciated!!

yu.feng2 Just join us and share your expertise area~

[susan_hou]

Thanks to Ivy for inviting. I joined SAP by participating the Vocational Training Project. SAP is the first company which held campus recruitment in my college. I was attracted by his slogan: help the word to run better.

SAP is not only the company's name but also the name of ERP product. It is used in B2B scenario which can help enterprises to reorganize the business logic, improve inventory turnover, create financial reports efficiently, etc. That's what I want to learn and that's why I am here. Besides, the story about how the five founders resigned from IBM then started up a new company also encouraged me. I love inspiring stories and reading autobiographies. Obviously, I have read Bill's book already.

In my spare time, I like reading, writing, trying out different things. Future is a blank drawing board. I will use my effort, curiosity, courage to draw a real beautiful picture on it.

Question Time.

Let me play the role of Wang Feng (a famous Chinese signer), Lol. What's your dream?

@Jeremy Jiang wendy.xu cathy.luo yang.bai myra.zhao

[ivy_li]

Maybe 10 years later you will be the next Bill:) Who knows! Keep up working!

@Jeremy Jiang Why not register yourself to become one of us?

[mmcisme1]

And now I'm curious, what do you write about? What a great comment - the future is a blank drawing board. It's something to think about often. There is never a straight path to where I'm going.

[yang_bai]

Thanks Diana for the invitation. This is great practice for us to get familiar with each other through our new community.

I joint SAP as VT and have been working in MM team for more than 9 years mainly focusing on MM-PUR and MM-IM component. Besides normal work, I also participate in some projects which includes the one impresses me most. That is the Social Sabbatical for local engagement to develop an software for Autism Children.

Through this project, I deeply and clearly feel the importance of caring Autism Children. I knew they are the ones we need to care and pay attention to, but I never felt they are so close to us and they are so focus than whatever I have imagined. I will try to particulate in more social activities to give back more and share more.

In the meantime, I would like to pass the ball to my friends:

polly.gan How do you balance your work and life? Because I know you are so busy as a role model in the team, but you are also a super good
mom who has two kids.
jrgen.lins How do you manage your time? Because I found you always the first one who answers/moderates a question in our community
space, like a superman, you can solve almost any problem or provide valuable suggestion, you are so amazing!

Can't wait for your answers:)

Best regards,
Yang

[ivy_li]

I really like your experience in the social sabbatical project. Thanks for letting us know what SAP is giving back to our society.

It seems that Jurgen L has been asked for many times with this question, and hope to hear from him who is definitely the thought leader in our community.

[diana_dai]

Thanks Yang for sharing the experience in the social sabbatical project. I feel your love to the children and the power of it. The experience opened a new door, from where we knew more about the needs of the children. There is a long way to go, but I believe it will become better and better, because of you and the colleagues, who are working hard for this project with love!

[former_member190665]

Thanks to Diana for the invitation.

I joined SAP in 2009. I worked as support consultant in MM team,mainly focus on MM-PUR area. (Diana was my mentor at that time, she is the best mentor you can imagine). From the March of 2016, I moved to CIC team.

Getting back to the question “How to you keep exercising with losing motivation?” I would say, after exercising for over 170 times, it has already become the habit which don’t need motivation any more. If I don’t go to gym for a while, for example, 3 days, I can feel some single from my body, which request myself to have some exercises.

@Diana Dai,

If we can start again from the time when I joined in SAP, anything you would like to teach me differently?

[ivy_li]

Very good experience in forming a habit of doing body exercise!

diana.dai Allen also raise up a very interesting question:

If we can start again from the time when I joined in SAP, anything you would like to teach me differently?

allen.wang9 sometimes the mention functionality is not working, or have to wait for a while so that you can choose the member from the list.

Thanks you two in joining this.

[moshenaveh]

allen.wang9 Welcome!

What's the happiest moment you remember in your career?

[diana_dai]

Thanks Allen, for answering so quickly, even though you are on vacation 🙂

By seeing the pictures of the exercising you shared in WeChat, I believe more the importance of perseverance. That will encourage me to complete more and more '21 day' challenges, both in work and life.

For your question "If we can start again from the time when I joined in SAP, anything you would like to teach me differently?", I would say I also learnt much from you, the passion, confidence and optimism. So if it could go back in time, I would like to try the 'Allen's way' for finding more possibilities.

[Bernhard]

Bringing in dolores.correa 😉

[hardyp180]

Since Matthew asked, the first job I ever got paid for was working at Heathrow airport, the government picks every hundredth person (or some such) to walk past and someone has to accost them and try and make them fill in a survey. It was not much fun. One of the women also doing that job approached a large African gentleman in what seemed to be tribal robes and he agreed to do the survey. She asked him what he did for a living and he said he was a magician and proved it by pulling a bunch of flowers out of thin air.

On my first day with the organisation I am still with 27 years later, I was in the accounts department ad got given a really boring task to convert the data in a huge spreadsheet into a different format where people could then punch the data into a mainframe. Moreover this task had to be done every month. By the end of that first day I had discovered that spreadsheets had a programming language i.e. macros and was half way through writing something to automate the process.

Since 1997 I have been involved with the IT department, which means SAP. For the last seventeen years I have been an ABAP programmer concentrating mainly on Australia, with a 3.5 year gap back in the European head office. This has mainly involved putting a "Z" veneer between the standard back end SAP system and the end users, to make things user friendly and fast. It has worked very well indeed and avoided the need for lots of "repairs" i.e. core modifications.

My job role has recently changed, becoming much more global. My current task is to get all the programmers in Australia and Germany to use OO inheritance and unit testing. It is not going to be easy but I truly believe it will bring huge benefits.I also have to oversee the re-writing of the major existing business critical monolithic procedural programs into an OO framework with unit tests.

If you read any of the huge amount of blogs I have written on the SCN you will see I have been gearing up to this for five years and I am amazingly grateful to my companies senior management for giving me the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is.

Cheersy Cheers

Paul

[mmcisme1]

That is a HUGE undertaking. I seriously hope your upper management is supportive. I remember one of the jobs that I had. It was when ABAP OO was newer. Not really new, but new to my company. I was "allowed" to write with them and learn. I tried influencing others to try. I didn't have any luck. Of course our deadlines were to get things done yesterday. Sometimes the learning curve seems overwhelming.

Using inheritance. Oh boy I can't even imagine trying to get people to use that. I am still learning OO and it's been years, and I don't use that very often. Meaning I don't think I ever have used it. I have used unit testing. Um... Maybe once. That's something I'm going to try to change.

[hardyp180]

Luckily I have support all the way to the top i.e. global CIO

Oddly enough I don't think inheritance will be the stumbling block. Our send state will be 50 countries on SAP, probably more over time, all using the same core programs. We could have 50 almost identical versions of the same programs, or one monolithic program loaded down with CASE statements based on country code.

If that is not a textbook case for inheritance I don't know what is.

Unit testing will be more tricky but I have tons of examples from real life where it has saved my bacon. I have found it is like the nuclear fission reaction. Almost impossible to start (i.e. get some using unit tests) but once they are convinced there is no going back.

[mmcisme1]

Hello Moshe,

Great initiative - I think it's needed. Honestly as I watch this community struggle. It makes me sad.

I joined SDN a long time ago. I can't remember the exact date. It was back when it was a lot of fun. Everything was new. Everyone was helpful. It was a lot smaller! I remember speaking at a pre-teched networking session. No extra fees. Amazing isn't it.

My job - well my job right now is a huge step backwards in the SAP world. I am working on version 4.6C. I usually have a pretty busy day. It's a struggle sometimes to remember the "older" way of doing things when I don't have a command or a class. It's a small company. We have 3 SAP developers. The website is developed completely in VB. It's amazing what you can do with .NET, VB, and JavaScript. When I was first hired 3 years ago, they were talking upgrade, hence I was a good fit. However, actual company business has gotten in the way.

I've done configuration in the past. However, now we are the configuration team and the development team. I'm learning a lot. Hopefully not too much of the old stuff. But that's OK too. It teaches me to think in a different way. I have been called upon to do BASIS. Oh boy does that scare me. That's the entire system I could easily break. I consistently find this job a challenge.

There is a co-worker new to ABAP. She is doing awesome! I have the fun job of being her mentor and friend. We use Skype.

We are planning to re-implement SAP next year. Yes, it's been a bit. Now we are planning for HANA on-premise. I guess no one here wants to be locked out of our system. I know, I know... we aren't really. And all that.

Prior to this job I was mostly on 6.0. A lot more already built in the system. The earliest version of SAP I've worked with is 3.1H.

I work remotely. I've been doing that for about eight years. And it is amazing. No - I don't set my own hours. I work a normal schedule. That helps keep me honest. I do work those hours and really feel it is stealing if I don't. Because I get paid a salary to work those hours whatever the salary for that hour would be what I steal. Yes, I do still take breaks and lunch. I live in the country and love it!

I am just getting back on to the community after around a 2 year or more break. Why? I was one of those silent frustrated people. I was just tired of it all. Now I hope to help push for change. That needs more than just me! So I'm so glad to see this.

And if you've gotten to the bottom of this - congratulations, I am nothing if not wordy.

Michelle

PS - I'm now coping this message for when I probably get the security error.

[Jelena]

I'm now copying this message for when I probably get the security error.

You have my full empathy on this one. 🙂

[mmcisme1]

Thank you!!!! 😉 That's one that drives me crazy.

[moshenaveh]

c436ae948d684935a91fce8b976e5aa7 Great to see you again in the community. I apologize for my late reply. I was in SAP TechEd Bangalore last week so now I'm catching-up.

It's pretty amazing to be working in an industry and comparing how things work today and back in the days. What elements remain stable over the years? What is your first SAP memory?

What was the most important lesson/experience/tip you acquired in your career that Michelle in university didn't know?

[mmcisme1]

Well - stable over the years. 🙂 Things are not stable - that's what makes it fun! Seriously the core SAP functions have remained close to the same. The material master is sort of the same, but of course it has grown. The sales order, purchase order, and production order have all basically been stable - there are changes in the look and feel. The basic ABAP itself has been stable. New things are added to make it easier and more efficient - but the basics are still there, and still important. So pretty much everything has changed since 3.1H. And that is what makes it so much fun! It's never boring.

My first SAP memory - oh boy - we went live in 1997. My first real memory is learning ABAP - 4 weeks in Boston while pregnant. I got sick while I was there too. My first SAP memory that will stick with me forever, is that the company was shut down for 3 weeks!!! Our consultants - unnamed - told us we were ready We weren't. I had a baby at home and was working 12 hour days. Our ABAP consultant had made a person I never thought would lose his temper - lose it! The consultant was someone who spoke English very well. When asked to do something that he couldn't or didn't know how to - he would revert to I don't understand what you want. So I got put in the hot seat. I had just learned ABAP, and was working on the production area. That was the area that was keeping us from producing. Some friends of mine ended up in Sales - keeping us from selling things. So our code wasn't up to par. Prior to go live some of our consultants left. There code worked great in a development environment, but once it got to production a lot of the programs would never finish. Crazy right? So the first memories are not that good. And our code that we wrote at that time got us by, but wasn't very good either. I think most of it has been rewritten by now. Oh yes, and another interesting memory - we had a consultant that was awesome! He was independent. He and I drove together to the main office. This was a sales issue. Our functional person got so mad at him he said the F word. Not good! Our consultant left me with no ride back while I was trying to calm down our in-house functional person. The awesome developer - our consultant was not a people person. So since the functional guy didn't want to work with him I was a go between. After our functional person calmed down - he gave me a ride back. It wasn't fun at the time. But I do look back and smile.

The most important tip did not have anything to do with SAP. Over all the places I've been - implementations, upgrades, and projects it is to listen and ask questions. Make sure you understand what they want prior to doing anything. Probably next I would say, always keep learning. In our roles, it doesn't matter what you do - you have to learn and change or find yourself without a job. And anyway isn't it just plain fun to learn!??? I know I don't want to be bored, and if it was always the same - I would be bored.

[JL23]

Actually, I am doing nothing right now, just enjoying the global warming in a remote town at the Gulf of Oman

I am working in a small team of 5, called MDM (Master Data Management), but it is not related to the SAP product which we do not have in use.

We take care about 1.3 million materials, 230000 vendors and 310000 customers as well as their classification. We are developing tools and rules and workflows that help to avoid data redundancy and ensure high data quality.

Most of my time is project related. We are still harmonizing our IT infrastructure and merging various own ERP systems into one, we do the data cleansing, mapping, and data migration. The general situation requires to have multiple projects in parallel.

Recently I finished Russia (system merger), a rollout to South America, and a US acquisition with numerous plants around the world, still doing a merger in Japan with 3 clients and just had a kickoff for another bigger US acquisition which will keep me busy till next summer. While I am IT MDM project lead in some projects I also enjoy to be just a team member in other projects, so we can learn from each other. Of course I have my templates based on earlier projects, but no project was ever like one before, so there is always some tweaking, but without we could not manage the many projects.

The time management question would require a blog to be answered sufficiently, maybe when I am retired, but it starts already with the decision of lace-up shoes versus velcro fastening. 😉

(Nov. 3, 2017 Edited the formatting. Posting with smartphone is not easy)

[moshenaveh]

jrgen.lins Thanks a lot for joining!

What are your top 10 golden rules in project management?

And you have another question pending for you from Gopal in this thread:)

[JL23]

I have no top 10 rules list, but it can be some fun to create together team rules in the beginning of the project and to see how they are applied through the project.

One of my personal rules is ignoring some administration and by-work (yesterday I got a powerpoint with KPIs showing colored diagrams about the number of orders and invoices etc since Go-Live) that does not add any value for my project work well knowing that it sometimes may break the rules of someone else.

One challenge in a project is that team members often miss to see the overall goal because they just focus on a certain exception. And this is discussed over and over again even its ratio to the normal business is just 1:10000. So you easily lose time for the more important things which have to be done daily several times. Here I try my best to get the day by day work done first and use the remaining time for the exception. Sometimes the exception just keeps to be an exception even with SAP (when coming from another legacy system) or when changing from one SAP to another SAP system.

[andreas_holzapfel]

Hey goatherds, //okay, maybe this was a bit too bold to start with... #goatspotting ftw!

thanks fly out to moshe.naveh2 for this _totally_ voluntary opportunity to tell you guys what I am actually doing. I am an SAP employee working as a Product Manager in the "Cloud & Lifecycle Management (CLM) / Software Logistics (SL)" area. Probably most of you guys might be familiar with the "Software Update Manager (SUM)" or the "Software Provisioning Manager (SWPM)" to update, upgrade, migrate or even install SAP systems - besides a lot of other capabilities to make your SAP basis life better, that is. CLM/SL is were they are at home. As I do have colleagues in this area who are contributing a lot more to the community than I am, let me take this opportunity to appoint boris.zarske, boris.rubarth, stefan.jakobi and jensfieger with an easy one: What do you enjoy most about your job? //Ha, now you're all caught up!

In particular, my area of activity covers the SAP Landscape Management product. Even as some customers and partners might claim that, this has absolutely _nothing_ to do with the "LaMa". Like... never! //Where is the maiden-like emoji here?!

As a Product Manager, my main goal is to ensure my product is helping customers - now and in the future. Helping them to make their business run better, helping them to focus on what they can do best, helping them to become relieved from (operational) pain. To do so, I work closely with our customers, partners, DEV teams, and partners to be in a state of constant dialogue. Oh, and even Marketing. Yeah, that's right! After all, nobody would eat mustard without knowing what it's good at. Think sausages! Did I mention that I'm bavarian? (Remark: Bavaria is "near" Germany) Ever ate mustard as it is?! Wouldn't have been a huge success on its own, I guess. Um.. what was this about?

So coming back to the interesting stuff, my role can be narrowed down to two things: Roll-in (figure out what customers want before they do) and Roll-out (tell the customers and partners how to make the most of what we provide them with). For both, the Community and also User Groups are outstanding and essential tools to stay in touch. So if there's something you want to ask or let us know about my product or the solutions we want to provide to the world, please don't hesitate to contact me!

Cheers,

Andreas

//Where did THAT come from? 😮

[moshenaveh]

andreas.holzapfel

Thanks a lot for joining! It was great meeting you in person in TechEd.

I will start by asking to reveal your magic! How do you know what your customers want before they do? What are your techniques?

And by the way, Lama means in Hebrew "Why". So I must ask why did you choose this profession? What do you think in your charchter made it appealing to you?

[andreas_holzapfel]

Keeping the magic for myself allows for two things: Me keeping my job and the community being entertained continuously 😉

Kidding aside, it's working on a lot of different ends. With LaMa, our goal is to make our customers' lives easier when it comes to SAP operations. This allows us to leverage a huge benefit for getting insights and making assumptions: It's not only that the problem at hand already exists, it is also shared amongst a variety of customers with completely different mindsets. Simply speaking, we are always looking for and then starting with the common denominator and take first standardization and then automation from there. The secret sauce is to listen on a variety of different ends. Therefore, we do not only leverage the SAP Community (hey there!) and SAP initiatives to identify and talk to customers (aka "Customer Engagement Initiative" - CEI), but also one of the most powerful, engaging and motivating entities in the field: SAP User Groups - we love you guys!

Once the problems to solve are put to paper next to what it actually means for our customers, we get cracking. As the standard automation solution for SAP, this very SAP is our focus, of course. Luckily, the products and solutions to automate are in the neighborhood - quite literally. So we sit together with them and develop automation processes from the prototype(s) to fully supported deliverables. Right there, the you've completed the circle and need to start from the beginning again: How does the solution fit the need? Has the actual need shifted in the meantime? What can we learn for the next interation?

Wow, that might have been the smoothest transition to a question for quite some time. So why Product Management? Well...

I like asking the whys until a root problem is identified, but I am not a requirements engineer.

I love to look for solutions to problems, but I am not a designer.

I am passionate about presenting the value of a solution, but I am not a sales guy.

I am happy about playing around with new technology, but I am not a developer.

I enjoy listening to user stories and telling them as well, but I am not a marketing guy.

I appreciate any opportunity to help optimize and structure work packages, but I am not a project manager.

I am thriving when I can provide motivation and purpose for a team, but I am not a line manager.

I am eager to helping customers getting better, but I am not a consultant.

In Software, this job is the ultimate jack of all trades - and that's what I love about it and that's also what I think makes a good fit between my character and the job requirements. As Bill one said (about leadership - but still), always try to be in a room with smarter people surrounding you. It's really not about what you add to team individually and the credit for that, but what the team is capable of in the end. Put simple: I love working on being the secret sauce... every day a little more.