SAP SOAP: detective novels set inside SAP projects

SAP SOAP is a detective series set where nobody expects a detective: inside an SAP project. The meetings are real. The workarounds are real. The companies and the people are invented. Nobody actually dies. The project usually comes close.

Three cases, three angles: the manager, the consultant and the analyst. Two are out, a third is under investigation. Each stands on its own, so start with the one that sounds like your project. Or get both: The series on Amazon →

Data Migration

In the middle of a data migration, or about to start one? Death by Spreadsheet →

Bad data in test systems is holding up user acceptance testing. Alex gets just one week to find the root cause and come up with a rescue plan, before go-live arrives whether anyone is ready or not.

Custom Code

Stuck with custom code that nobody dares touch, or that only one person understands? Death by Workaround →

Everything works, until it doesn’t. Then production stops, and everyone waits for one man. Max is the last developer standing, custodian of the custom code by default, and the single point of failure.

Intercompany

Selling from one country, shipping from another, invoicing a third, and trusting SAP to get the VAT right? Death by Email →

Frank, the VAT specialist, is on holiday, and somebody has to cover while he is away. That somebody is Priya: fourteen stale tickets and email threads eleven forwards deep, not one of them with a ticket number. Case 3, under investigation. Not published yet.

True or fiction?

Every case takes place at Sapura Cosmetics. The company was built on one product, the flagship sapwood soap bar, and it still keeps a row of them in the boardroom, sealed in acrylic boxes. Glass panels, polished floors, a reception desk that welcomes you and moves you on. Behind the calm front runs a manufacturing business on SAP S/4HANA, and a cast of people doing their best with both.

Sapura Cosmetics does not exist. Neither do its people. The problems it runs into are another matter. Meet the company, and find out what is real →

It’s a SOAP, with a twist

In IT, SOAP started life as Simple Object Access Protocol: a standard way for two systems to exchange messages. Every message travels in the same envelope, with a header and a body, written in XML that both sides read the same way. When something goes wrong, the protocol says so in a fault message, so it doesn’t fail in silence.

It is one of the ways SAP systems talk to the rest of the world, and it works because so little is left to interpretation.

People on SAP projects have no such protocol. They agree in public and disagree in private. They report problems late, or not at all.

That is the twist. In these books, SOAP is about the humans behind the systems. Every protagonist finds their own four words: the same four letters, a different meaning each time.

• Alex, on a data migration: Structured. Open. Aligned. Purified. “Sooner or later everything needs a good scrub. That includes data, process, and your ego.”

• Amy, on custom code: Stabilise. Ownership. Accountable. Protected. “When one person becomes the system, that is not expertise. That is exposure.”

• Priya, on intercompany: Shared. Official. Auditable. Proven. “If it isn’t in the ticket, it didn’t happen.”

Life can be a soap opera. Dealing with SAP is no exception. Each book has a deeper meaning when you look for it.

Each one is unpacked, case by case, on the SOAP page →

A detective story, set in SAP

No police. No badge. Nobody dies. The crime scene is a project, the witnesses sit on the steering committee, and the evidence hides in error logs, ticket histories and the silences in meetings. Every error log is a clue. Every silence in a meeting is another lead.

Alex learns the hard way what owning a problem means. Amy means well in finding a solution, but becomes an unlikely target. Priya starts her day believing she has everything under control, but that changes in a split second. None of them carries a gun. All of them carry a notebook.

Each case runs like a whodunnit: clues, suspects, a trail to follow and a deadline that won’t move. The difference is that you will recognise the suspects. You have worked with them.

Written by the SAP Detective

Isard Haasakker has 30 years of SAP experience. He has witnessed events in the SAP SOAP books, taking notes. Then he started writing them up as cases. Keeping it confidential. Meet the author →