What is your methodology for assessing the efficiency of an existing process?
As a senior staff engineer, you are likely to be managing other engineers and the work done by the entire team. This will require you to respond to interview questions that extend beyond software development practices. You'll need to discuss your management style, how you evaluate the team's performance, and other non-software development-related questions. This is an example of one of those. This question addresses not only your engineering knowledge but also your organizational talents.
"There are several different ways you can measure the efficiency of an existing software process. In general, efficiency is measured by dividing the software's actual performance by the average performance of similar pieces of code. A specific example involves multiplying the utilization of the application by its reliability. This is known as process efficiency. Utilization is calculated by dividing the amount of time the application is functioning by the total hours in the measurement period. Reliability is a factor of the uptime, the applications functionality, and the field pass yield, also known as the throughput yield."
