I define software effectiveness as, doing the objective effectively, I mean correctly. Efficiency can be defined as, using the resources optimally where resources could be memory, CPU, time, files, connections, databases etc.

From my experience, in most (should I call many) of the software projects, efficiency/performance is not much accentuated during the system design and in earlier phases(requirement and estimation) as compared to the emphasis given late in the game, coding and testing and mostly in maintenance.

Stressing on efficiency, during the early SDLC phases, can eliminate lot of problems. If we consider the efficiency in say coding phase, then we probably able to develop an optimal system in which 90% of the code using just 1% of CPU in peak load, but 10% of code is using 99% of CPU. If we worry about the performance only after the system is built then we are in the worst situation, we probably could not reach 90% optimal code level.

Coming back to effectiveness, usually this is the most emphasized topic in all the SDLC phases, we always try to make the system understandable, testable, and maintainable.

Efficiency is generally against the code quality measures that were considered to improve effectiveness, more efficient code is usually more difficult to understand, hard to maintain, sometime very hard to test.

So based on project, we should benchmark/strengthen the SDLC process to balance-out the efficiency and effectiveness in each phases. Keep in mind that there are always some modules where efficiency is more concerned than the understandability, maintainability. We may change our mind setup when understanding a highly efficient module that this will require more effort to understand, maintain and test.

This post is not meant to allow you writing less effective code, saying that you are writing efficient code so; it will be less understandable, not testable and not maintainable. Use better design pattern, prepare approach and discuss it, design the efficient module vary carefully

This article was originally published on My LinkedIn Profile