Trade-offs: speed vs accuracy

We can probably agree that speed and accuracy are both desirable.

Do we also agree that there are trade-offs there?

• If you show up late for your final exam, you might have to sacrifice accuracy and hope to get most of the answers right.

• if you're launching a rocket to Mars, it might be worth taking some extra time to double check your calculations.

A CiviCRM example:

This week a client noticed that some of their newsletter recipients received two copies of the mailing.

It happened because of a trade-off between email processing speed and accuracy.

CiviCRM has a setting in the mailer component, "Database Update Frequency."

• A higher value in this setting will help high-volume senders to get their mailings out more quickly.

• But that increase in speed can lead to a decrease in accuracy: some recipients might get duplicate email messages. (This may sound like an odd trade-off but there are some very good technical reasons for this.)

Once we identifid the problem, it was simple enough to recognize that their relatively low sending volume does not demand the increased speed and efficiency.

So we changed that setting to the lowest possible number.

As a result, their outbound mass mailings are now just a little bit slower, but much more accurate.

Here's the thing:

In an ideal world you can have your cake and eat it too.

But in the real world, you're always making trade-offs.

It's good to know what those trade offs are, so you can pick the one that suits you best.

All the best,
A.