Ask HN: What is the diff between engineering team efficiency or effectiveness?

1 points by aadilmaan 5 years ago | 4 comments

Are these terms mutual exclusive? Is one a better indicator of teams success? I am curious how the engineers have to say about this. This is something CTOs and Eng VPs always say or talk about as their goal for their orgs.

IanDrake 5 years ago |

Let's say you have a room full of shit and your objective is to make the room smell nice.

You decide the best way to do that is to shovel the shit out of the room.

Efficiency is how fast you empty the room. Effectiveness is how nice the room smells when you're done.

aadilmaan 5 years ago | |

best analogy ever. What is more important to you?

IanDrake 5 years ago | | |

Effectiveness. Being efficient is only helpful if you are effective.

If the room still smells like shit after all that shoveling, does it matter how fast you shoveled?