Return on Software: Maximizing the Return on Your Software Investment

Choosing the Attributes

To make a proper decision, that decision needs to be based on appropriate decision criteria: the decision attributes. A number of guidelines are relevant in choosing the attributes for a decision:

• Each attribute (each decision criterion) needs to capture a unique dimension of the decision at hand— The attributes need to be independent and nonredundant; the same characteristic should not be captured in different ways by different attributes. An attribute in the UFO case that captured “general impressions of the candidate computer” would almost certainly implicitly incorporate aspects of speed, reliability, and noise. If a general impressions attribute were to be included, it would need to be defined in a way that excludes ...