Guidelines for Selection and Classification of Attributes

Each of the previously described nine software design methodologies were chosen for inclusion in this paper for several reasons. Those reasons are:

• The prominence of their authors in the software design community,
• The diversity of the focus of the methodological approaches,
• The diversity of the fields where the methodologies are applied (i.e. primarily HCI and Education),
• The ability to represent other methodologies not mentioned in this paper.
  

I have not selected all possible attributes, because of the large volume of data, and because that would defeat the purpose of focusing in on the critical attributes of each methodology. The attributes were selected based on three criteria:

• The attribute was very different from attributes in other methodologies,
• The attribute was central to the understanding of that particular methodology,
• The attribute was central to a methodology and was very similar to attributes in other methodologies.