Efficiency and Effectiveness of IT
These are two much-used and often abused terms in IT. Moreover, they are frequently used as synomymous and randomly interchanged which helps little to come to grips with all the smart marketing gibberish that accompanies most IT-related matters. But as Carl Mitcham points out in Thinking through Technology efficiency in technological terms relates to a ratio of input/output, whereas effectiveness has to do with the desired outcome. This means that efficiency is strictly measurable and can be best applied to assembly-line and similar straightforward operations. Effectiveness, on the other hand, can also be measured by given parameters but as we deal with desirable results it is highly probable that we choose desired and known parameters which tell little to nothing about the unknowns of a certain action nor its immediate or long-term undesired effects. Therefore any claim of the effectiveness of IT should be taken with a grain of salt.
carl mitcham