Effectiveness vs Efficiency: which one is more important for agile? 

Believe this is more of a contextual thing, in more predictive environment we are ok to focus more on efficiency. Whereas at the same time in VUCA world it has to be tight rope and need to choose right bets where adaptability Trump's and hence being effective is imp

@@saijos9798 It is contextual I agree. There is a time for being efficient and a time for being effective. The art is to know how to switch from one to the other, recognise when one matters more than the other.

Thanks for the very kind words! 😊

You're absolutely right... There is a lot to be said on this. Without revealing too much ahead, I can tell you hat I have plans for a video on this already :-)

@@TheAgileBroadcast thank you. I will be waiting.!

Thanks for your comment, I'd love to discuss this further if you're up for it? Could you give a concrete example where focusing on efficiency alone leads to effective outcomes? When you say "effectiveness alone leads to lower quality" I think it depends on what you mean by quality. The early smart phones were buggy, crashed a lot and were no where near as reliable as my old Nokia from the early 2000s - But they are still much better product providing a lot more value to users. In that sense, the "quality" is higher. Would I prefer if they weren't buggy? yes, absolutely. But if I have to choose, I'd rather take the buggy smart phones than the very reliable old phone. I'd assume we can agree that the ideal situation is being both effective and efficient at what you do, right? But If I have to choose, then I go for effectiveness. As Peter Drucker said, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Having said all that, it's not that simple (and I was thinking of making another video to explain this further): It can be very beneficial to be super efficient at a particular task in order to be effective overall. A good example of that is a Scrum daily stand-up. Being efficient at it (i.e. it doesn't last too long, everyone gets to talk, we all get a good overview in short period) will make you more effective at Scrum in general...

@@TheAgileBroadcast Yeah, thanks I like the way you put it. No specific example comes to mind but my thinking is just that efficiency is all about avoiding waste (as much as reasonable) in all ramifications and if you are you are doing the wrong thing, then that's already wasteful which is not efficient. Then I think doing the right things is a given. Everyone starts out thinking they are doing the right thing and no one really knows they are doing the wrong thing until they test anyways. So focusing on efficiency is never really at the expense of effectiveness since it is a given. But focusing all on effectiveness could be at the expense of efficiency. But Yes we can both agree that the ideal is to be effective and efficient.

@@dipee1nollynativetv I think we are using a different definition of the term waste and the term efficiency.... Efficiency is about avoiding a certain kind of waste (check out the Lean definition of waste - it defines 7 different types). Building the wrong thing is also wasteful, but it's a different type of waste. Becoming more efficient at something does not (cannot) magically solve that problem. One can be very efficient at building the wrong thing, right? And perhaps this is where we differ: I really do not think being effective is a given. In my experience, it's just not. As you said so yourself, it's most likely everyone's intention to be effective (Nobody intentionally sets out to build the wrong thing on purpose), but one can easy be wrong without knowing it, and solely focusing on efficiency will distract you from ever finding out because then you're not asking yourself the question: am I doing the right thing?... If you are asking that question, then you are indeed focusing on effectiveness. Not convinced we're going to get to the bottom of this, but nice discussion! Thanks!

Thanks! It's exactly what I tend to focus on. "process of the process" I love the phrase - I'll definitely use it in th future 😀

The mystical library E ;-) What you're pointing to here is the "unknown unknowns", right? So, yes, in the video I assumed, for simplicity, that library A, B, C and D is all there is, but of course that's almost never the case (i.e. they are "known unknowns"). There is always the possibility that there is this library is way more suitable for your needs than the ones you currently know about. To be really really sure, you'd have to test ALL possibilities, but that's rarely practical of course. The key is balancing the 2 approaches and being aware it's often a matter of trade-off between being efficient and being effective.

In my opinion, i'd choose to spend effort in two cases if the time would minimize, and see if those are the correct ones. And than look up for other two "if" our choice is wrong. Even if first two would have been wrong, i could save time by minimizing time. Example: Choose the best strategy to be "Effective and Efficient" 4 people working on: a. 1 case finish at 2 X time, b. 2 case finish at 4 X time, c. 3 case finish at 5 X time, d. 4 case finish at 7 X time I'd go with "b." twice, rather than "d." or "c. + a."

Hi Bilal, thanks for your question! What I describe was 2 extreme strategies, and there is nothing wrong with having a "hybrid" approach. I would say that as long as you understand the pros and cons of each extremes, then it's up to you to find a strategy that you think is best, given how much effort/bandwidth you have available, how confident you are about which case is correct, etc. Thanks for sharing your thought!

What?