Where Do You Want to Work Today?

(This is the second and concluding part of this article. The first part appeared in the May-June 2005 issue of Indus.)

Changes in Deadlines

Worldwide, deadlines change! In most countries deadlines are always or frequently changing on projects, that is, approximately 60 percent of the time. Except in India, where that happens only 26 percent of the time.

Changes in Scope

Compared to deadlines, the scopes of projects don’t change as often. Overall, 55 percent of the time the scope of a project changes sometimes, rarely, or never. In all of the countries surveyed, approximately 45 percent of time, project scope changes only sometimes.

How Happy are We Anyway?

With respect to job satisfaction, in general, we’re a happy bunch overall. Over 85 percent said that they were satisfied to very happy with their jobs with moderate stress (62%).

Stress Levels

Over 75 percent said that they faced mild to moderate stress at work. Too much work (63%) was cited as the primary reason for stress, with lack of resources coming in second (27%).

So is It Really Very Different?

This table provides a comparison of the way we work across different regions:

Australia and New Zealand

* 74% cited change in product or project scope as the main reason for rework. Other major reasons included changes in features and functions, errors in documentation and specifications, and changes in writing style guidelines.

** 93.75% of these writers manage to meet deadlines almost always.

*** This high level of job satisfaction is despite 69% reporting moderate to extreme stress at work.

**** The main reasons being sheer volume of work and a lack of resources.

Europe

*69.5% cited change in product or project scope as the main reason for rework. Other major reasons included changes in features and functions, errors in documentation and specifications, and changes in writing style guidelines.

**85.3% of these writers manage to meet deadlines almost always.

*** This high level of job satisfaction is despite 83% reporting moderate to extreme stress at work.

****The main reasons being sheer volume of work and a lack of resources.

India

*62% cited change in product or project scope as the main reason for rework. Other major reasons included changes in features and functions, errors in documentation and specifications, and changes in writing style guidelines.

**88% of these writers manage to meet deadlines almost always.

***This high level of job satisfaction is despite 87.6% reporting moderate to extreme stress at work.

****The main reasons being sheer volume of work and a lack of resources.

Israel

*57.6% cited change in product or project scope as the main reason for rework. Other major reasons included changes in features and functions, errors in documentation and specifications, and changes in writing style guidelines.

** 82% of these writers manage to meet deadlines almost always.

***This high level of job satisfaction is despite 82.3% reporting moderate to extreme stress at work.

****The main reasons being sheer volume of work and a lack of resources.

North America

*65% cited change in product or project scope as the main reason for rework. Other major reasons included changes in features and functions, errors in documentation and specifications, and changes in writing style guidelines.

**94% of these writers manage to meet deadlines almost always.

*** This high level of job satisfaction is despite 81% reporting moderate to extreme stress at work.

****The main reasons being sheer volume of work and a lack of resources.  

Melanie Doulton has been writing technical documentation for ten years. She has worked in India and France and is now a lead information developer at BMC Software (India) Pvt. Ltd.

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