Efficiency and Effectiveness Difference

There is a difference between efficiency and effectiveness. This is a very common question that pops up from time to time during planning, executing, retrospective analysis, and everyday life.

In short, efficiency is about doing things right to achieve the goal (emphasis on execution), and the effectiveness is about doing the right things to achieve the goal (emphasis on planning)

The best way to describe the difference is to look at real life example.

Software engineering example

Let us imagine, your team has to present a stock management system to a potential client. The client has asked for a demo version tailored to their particular case. The estimated time of presentation is in two weeks, and the demo has to be ready by that moment.

❌ No efficiency, but effectiveness

The team takes three weeks to develop a demo. The team does research before starting development and has a complete understanding of what the client needs. The resulting code is well-tested, the stock management system presents the features specifically requested by the client. The demo itself goes smoothly.

The client decides not to proceed. Client sees high quality, but they do not want to deal with broken promises in terms of delivery dates.

❌ Efficiency, but no effectiveness

The team takes one week to develop a demo. The team dives right into development without proper planning and understanding what client needs. Engineers write code fast, communication is constant. The resulting code is messy and slow. The presented stock management system has a lot of features, but none of them are needed by the client. The demo itself goes sloppy, some of the demoed things fail to work.

The client decides not to proceed. The demo was prepared earlier than anticipated, but the quality is obviously low.

✅ Efficiency and effectiveness

The team finishes the demo on time. The initial high-level research is done, most of the development work concentrates on features specifically requested by the client. The code follows company standards, the communication between parts of the stock management system is clear. The demo is short, but it has clear structure and contains live demo of critical system features.

The client decides to proceed, as the team is able to properly plan steps needed to reach the goal and it carries out every step with proper speed and quality.

Summary

Optimise for both efficiency and effectiveness whenever it is possible.

You can never achieve 100% of both, but you only need a proper balance of efficiency and effectiveness to achieve truly great results.