I. Introduction: Scope And Methodology
Our SAP Developer Insights Survey has become an annual event that we use to keep tabs on our external developer audiences. The effort is led by the SAP Developer and Community Relations team. Key internal support was provided this year by the Global Experience Management Office and the SAP.com web team.
From the start, we aimed for a short survey of targeted questions. Last year’s survey averaged 25 minutes to complete. We wanted to take that time down closer to fifteen minutes. It took some work, but we came up with a significantly reduced question set. In short: this Developer Insights Survey is not designed to be an exhaustive survey of general industry trends. It’s meant to provide insights into the developer population within the SAP ecosystem including preferences, interests, tools, etc. We will use this data to help us tailor our programs and offerings to better suit the current needs of all SAP developers.
The survey ran for six calendar weeks between February 1 and March 14, 2021. Ninety percent of the respondents invested 15 minutes or less with the survey. We had almost 2,600 respondents from 63 countries. That total is roughly in-line with the number of responses from the 2020 survey.
This report is a summary of the survey results.
II. Key 2021 Takeaways
83% of respondents are using SAP Business Technology Platform or plan to use it in the near future
80% of respondents have built SAP ERP or digital core extensions in the past year (up 9% from 2020)
58% of respondents report 6+ years of professional SAP project experience
52% are using some Cloud platform for development at this time (up 8% from 2020)
54% of respondents report working somewhat or much more hours since the beginning of the pandemic
III. General Questions
Did You Work From Home Prior To January 2020?
Only twenty nine percent of respondents reported working from home prior to January 2020.
Where Are You Working From Today?
Eighty four percent of respondents reported that they currently work from home. This is up roughly fifty-five percent since the start of the pandemic. This is perhaps unsurprising. We plan to repeat this question in the next year’s survey to see if there is a trend.
TIME SPENT WORKING
Compared to last year, how many hours are you working?
A total of fifty-two percent of our respondents say they are working harder since the start of the pandemic. We did not ask any follow-up questions on this, so the underlying reason remains unclear.
JOB ROLES
Which of the below best describe your role? Select all that apply.
Folks who call themselves “Developers” still dominate our job role distribution.
When we asked respondents this question about their role, we allowed for multiple selections. We were curious how development roles might overlap in our overall population. Here, we’ve depicted a few interesting features as a Venn diagram. The area of each overlapping region reflects the number of folks selecting more than one. Some roles were omitted to make for a clearer chart.
There’s a few features that we take away from this: SAP Basis, Back-end, and Full-stack developers each have significant populations who just characterize themselves by that one role. Our interpretation here might be that these are good candidates for distinct top-level enablement programs. Maybe unsurprisingly, front-end developers seem to be almost completely included in full-stack development.
GEOGRAPHY
What country are you based in?
India, Germany, and the US make up close to half of the overall total responses (46%). Europe is the largest geographic region, accounting for 43% of the responses.
IV. SAP Insights
Previous polls of SAP Developers had indicated that working on new projects presented the best opportunity to learn new technologies. We were curious how many projects someone typically works on in a year, so we asked.
DEVELOP FOR SAP
Have you developed integrations or extensions for any SAP products or technologies in the past 12 months?
Seventy five percent of respondents said to have developed SAP integrations or extensions in the past year.
SAP PROJECT ACTIVITY
How many SAP projects have you participated in within the past 12 months?
Twenty eight percent of respondents reported working on two projects while twenty four percent reported working on three projects and another twenty four percent said to have participated in five or more projects.
RELATIONSHIP TO SAP
The following question was shown to those who answer “yes” to developing SAP extensions or integrations within the past 12 months.
How would you best classify your working relationship(s) with SAP? Please check all that apply.
The working relationship to SAP can be a factor in some learning material. Here we see that just over half of the respondents work for an SAP Partner. One quarter could be characterized as freelance consultants.
OVERALL SOFTWARE EXPERIENCE
Overall, how many years of general software experience do you have?
Our Developer base could be characterized as highly experienced – over three quarters have six or more years of experience.
We asked similar experience-related questions for a number of software categories.
We also were curious to what extent individuals might be working with these technology categories outside of their employment.
We see that Machine Learning, Mobile Application Development, Consumer Devices and Augmented and Virtual Reality are all areas of experimentation outside of work – this experience might easily be applied in work settings, given the right opportunity.
V. Tools And Cloud Providers
TOP PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
What programming languages have you used in your development projects in the past twelve months? Select All that apply.
ABAP dominates as it did in 2020. JavaScript is very popular as well, which could be attributed to its use in both SAPUI5 and the SAP Cloud Application Programming model. The CDS modeling language appears in SAP HANA, CAP, and ABAP platform.
USING CLOUD PROVIDERS
Are you using any Cloud providers for your development projects?
Half of our respondents are using Cloud Providers for development projects.
VI. SAP Products And Developers
Since the SAP Business Technology Platform is centered on providing capabilities for extending and integrating to SAP applications, we were curious which applications were the target. We asked which areas developers had built extensions or integrations for in the past twelve months – it’s worth noting that we did not callout BTP in the question, so these percentages should reflect SAP targets overall.
Clearly, ERP and the digital core stand out at eighty two percent. Also, it appears that BTP is also popular for general application development (58%).
On the tools and technologies side, we were curious which major subsystems of BTP or SAP technologies might be currently in use or evaluation. SAP Cloud Platform was merging into the SAP Business Technology Platform at the time of this survey. Given the timing of the survey period, we opted not to replace the SAP Cloud Platform term owing to confusion it might create. We will adapt next year’s survey to adopt the new naming.
Again clearly, the ABAP platform is very popular. SAP Cloud Platform as well.
DDM products, UI development products, and Integration services and frameworks are frequently used.
Notably, AI Business Services has almost 60% awareness but developers seem to have not had occasion to try it out on projects.
VII. Insights Around Learning
LEARNING RESOURCES USED MOST
When learning new skills or technical subjects over the past twelve months, what resources did you tend to use the most? Please select the top three.
The SAP Developer web sites, Tutorials, and How-to videos, and webinars top this list. Books are still called out as useful, but only for a fifth of the respondents.
LEARNING RESOURCES BY AGE RANGE
We were curious if the preferred learning resources varied by age group.
Here we compared favored learning resources with each age group. We were curious if there was any distinguishing pattern that emerged. The differences seemed relatively minor.
SAP LEARNING HUB
Do you have a subscription to SAP Learning Hub?
Forty six percent of respondents said to have a subscription to SAP Learning Hub.
TECHNICAL CERTIFICATIONS COMPLETED
How many technology-related certification programs have you completed in the past four years?
Almost fifty percent of respondents have an SAP Learning Hub subscription today.
On a loosely related question, respondents do seek formal certifications either for their job or career development, as shown above. Almost a quarter attained four or more formal certifications in the past four years
SAP PREFERRED HELP RESOURCE
What is your preferred resource if you need help or have a challenge with the SAP technology or tool you are working with?
SAP Community comes out at the preferred help resource for our respondents. Web search engines come in a close second.
VIII. Survey Methodology
This report is based on a web-based survey of 2,585 respondents from 63 countries. The survey ran for six calendar weeks between February 1 and March 14, 2021. Ninety percent of the respondents invested 15 minutes or less with the survey.
The survey was promoted via the SAP Community website (community.sap.com) and the SAP Developer Center (developers.sap.com), SAP.com pop-up intercepts, social media, and newsletters.
This was a survey focusing on our external community. As such, responses from SAP employees and contractors were excluded from the survey results.
Many questions were only asked based on earlier responses in the survey. For example, questions about SAP tools and technology use were only asked where the respondent affirmed that they were an SAP Developer.
IX. Your Feedback
We hope you found this report on the Developer Insights Survey interesting. Maybe you have a comment that will help us improve it in the future. If you have a question or thoughts that you’d like to share, leave a post on blogs.sap.com or message us at the @SAPDevs Twitter account.
I. Introduction: Scope And Methodology
Our SAP Developer Insights Survey has become an annual event that we use to keep tabs on our external developer audiences. The effort is led by the SAP Developer and Community Relations team. Key internal support was provided this year by the Global Experience Management Office and the SAP.com web team.
From the start, we aimed for a short survey of targeted questions. Last year’s survey averaged 25 minutes to complete. We wanted to take that time down closer to fifteen minutes. It took some work, but we came up with a significantly reduced question set. In short: this Developer Insights Survey is not designed to be an exhaustive survey of general industry trends. It’s meant to provide insights into the developer population within the SAP ecosystem including preferences, interests, tools, etc. We will use this data to help us tailor our programs and offerings to better suit the current needs of all SAP developers.
The survey ran for six calendar weeks between February 1 and March 14, 2021. Ninety percent of the respondents invested 15 minutes or less with the survey. We had almost 2,600 respondents from 63 countries. That total is roughly in-line with the number of responses from the 2020 survey.
This report is a summary of the survey results.
II. Key 2021 Takeaways
83% of respondents are using SAP Business Technology Platform or plan to use it in the near future
80% of respondents have built SAP ERP or digital core extensions in the past year (up 9% from 2020)
58% of respondents report 6+ years of professional SAP project experience
52% are using some Cloud platform for development at this time (up 8% from 2020)
54% of respondents report working somewhat or much more hours since the beginning of the pandemic
III. General Questions
Did You Work From Home Prior To January 2020?
Only twenty nine percent of respondents reported working from home prior to January 2020.
Where Are You Working From Today?
Eighty four percent of respondents reported that they currently work from home. This is up roughly fifty-five percent since the start of the pandemic. This is perhaps unsurprising. We plan to repeat this question in the next year’s survey to see if there is a trend.
TIME SPENT WORKING
Compared to last year, how many hours are you working?
A total of fifty-two percent of our respondents say they are working harder since the start of the pandemic. We did not ask any follow-up questions on this, so the underlying reason remains unclear.
JOB ROLES
Which of the below best describe your role? Select all that apply.
Folks who call themselves “Developers” still dominate our job role distribution.
When we asked respondents this question about their role, we allowed for multiple selections. We were curious how development roles might overlap in our overall population. Here, we’ve depicted a few interesting features as a Venn diagram. The area of each overlapping region reflects the number of folks selecting more than one. Some roles were omitted to make for a clearer chart.
There’s a few features that we take away from this: SAP Basis, Back-end, and Full-stack developers each have significant populations who just characterize themselves by that one role. Our interpretation here might be that these are good candidates for distinct top-level enablement programs. Maybe unsurprisingly, front-end developers seem to be almost completely included in full-stack development.
GEOGRAPHY
What country are you based in?
India, Germany, and the US make up close to half of the overall total responses (46%). Europe is the largest geographic region, accounting for 43% of the responses.
IV. SAP Insights
Previous polls of SAP Developers had indicated that working on new projects presented the best opportunity to learn new technologies. We were curious how many projects someone typically works on in a year, so we asked.
DEVELOP FOR SAP
Have you developed integrations or extensions for any SAP products or technologies in the past 12 months?
Seventy five percent of respondents said to have developed SAP integrations or extensions in the past year.
SAP PROJECT ACTIVITY
How many SAP projects have you participated in within the past 12 months?
Twenty eight percent of respondents reported working on two projects while twenty four percent reported working on three projects and another twenty four percent said to have participated in five or more projects.
RELATIONSHIP TO SAP
The following question was shown to those who answer “yes” to developing SAP extensions or integrations within the past 12 months.
How would you best classify your working relationship(s) with SAP? Please check all that apply.
The working relationship to SAP can be a factor in some learning material. Here we see that just over half of the respondents work for an SAP Partner. One quarter could be characterized as freelance consultants.
OVERALL SOFTWARE EXPERIENCE
Overall, how many years of general software experience do you have?
Our Developer base could be characterized as highly experienced – over three quarters have six or more years of experience.
We asked similar experience-related questions for a number of software categories.
We also were curious to what extent individuals might be working with these technology categories outside of their employment.
We see that Machine Learning, Mobile Application Development, Consumer Devices and Augmented and Virtual Reality are all areas of experimentation outside of work – this experience might easily be applied in work settings, given the right opportunity.
V. Tools And Cloud Providers
TOP PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
What programming languages have you used in your development projects in the past twelve months? Select All that apply.
ABAP dominates as it did in 2020. JavaScript is very popular as well, which could be attributed to its use in both SAPUI5 and the SAP Cloud Application Programming model. The CDS modeling language appears in SAP HANA, CAP, and ABAP platform.
USING CLOUD PROVIDERS
Are you using any Cloud providers for your development projects?
Half of our respondents are using Cloud Providers for development projects.
VI. SAP Products And Developers
Since the SAP Business Technology Platform is centered on providing capabilities for extending and integrating to SAP applications, we were curious which applications were the target. We asked which areas developers had built extensions or integrations for in the past twelve months – it’s worth noting that we did not callout BTP in the question, so these percentages should reflect SAP targets overall.
Clearly, ERP and the digital core stand out at eighty two percent. Also, it appears that BTP is also popular for general application development (58%).
On the tools and technologies side, we were curious which major subsystems of BTP or SAP technologies might be currently in use or evaluation. SAP Cloud Platform was merging into the SAP Business Technology Platform at the time of this survey. Given the timing of the survey period, we opted not to replace the SAP Cloud Platform term owing to confusion it might create. We will adapt next year’s survey to adopt the new naming.
Again clearly, the ABAP platform is very popular. SAP Cloud Platform as well.
DDM products, UI development products, and Integration services and frameworks are frequently used.
Notably, AI Business Services has almost 60% awareness but developers seem to have not had occasion to try it out on projects.
VII. Insights Around Learning
LEARNING RESOURCES USED MOST
When learning new skills or technical subjects over the past twelve months, what resources did you tend to use the most? Please select the top three.
The SAP Developer web sites, Tutorials, and How-to videos, and webinars top this list. Books are still called out as useful, but only for a fifth of the respondents.
LEARNING RESOURCES BY AGE RANGE
We were curious if the preferred learning resources varied by age group.
Here we compared favored learning resources with each age group. We were curious if there was any distinguishing pattern that emerged. The differences seemed relatively minor.
SAP LEARNING HUB
Do you have a subscription to SAP Learning Hub?
Forty six percent of respondents said to have a subscription to SAP Learning Hub.
TECHNICAL CERTIFICATIONS COMPLETED
How many technology-related certification programs have you completed in the past four years?
Almost fifty percent of respondents have an SAP Learning Hub subscription today.
On a loosely related question, respondents do seek formal certifications either for their job or career development, as shown above. Almost a quarter attained four or more formal certifications in the past four years
SAP PREFERRED HELP RESOURCE
What is your preferred resource if you need help or have a challenge with the SAP technology or tool you are working with?
SAP Community comes out at the preferred help resource for our respondents. Web search engines come in a close second.
VIII. Survey Methodology
This report is based on a web-based survey of 2,585 respondents from 63 countries. The survey ran for six calendar weeks between February 1 and March 14, 2021. Ninety percent of the respondents invested 15 minutes or less with the survey.
The survey was promoted via the SAP Community website (community.sap.com) and the SAP Developer Center (developers.sap.com), SAP.com pop-up intercepts, social media, and newsletters.
This was a survey focusing on our external community. As such, responses from SAP employees and contractors were excluded from the survey results.
Many questions were only asked based on earlier responses in the survey. For example, questions about SAP tools and technology use were only asked where the respondent affirmed that they were an SAP Developer.
IX. Your Feedback
We hope you found this report on the Developer Insights Survey interesting. Maybe you have a comment that will help us improve it in the future. If you have a question or thoughts that you’d like to share, leave a post on blogs.sap.com or message us at the @SAPDevs Twitter account.