

Efficiency is the enemy of effectiveness - gojko
http://gojko.net/2009/11/04/efficiency-is-the-enemy-of-effectiveness/

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edw519
I appreciate OP's point, but this piece is just a little too "fluffy" to
justify its title. I think we can minimize fluffiness by defining terms. My
mentor (a brilliant industrial engineer) used these definitions:

efficiency = output / input

effectiveness = goal / input

I don't see them as enemies, but as different metrics.

OP is right about one thing, though: if we focus on efficiency, we can easily
lose sight of the goal (which is nowhere in its definition).

[EDIT: Thanks, eru, for pointing out my errors. Fixed. "Ok! Ok! I must have, I
must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always
do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."]

~~~
eru
Your definition is backwards. (Or I misunderstand what you mean by input and
output.)

By the way, I'd use different definitions. On the one hand, you can fix your
goal and try to get by with the least amount of resources. On the other hand,
you can fix your resources and try to maximize what you can achieve. (The
problems are the dual of each other. (In the strict mathematical sense of
optimization problems.))

