Design methodology management is an emerging technology in the world o
f electrical computer aided design. It has spawned considerable resear
ch over the past decade, and a firm belief in many people's minds that
it is the key to significant productivity enhancements in the next. H
ow close are we to seeing this belief fulfilled? In this paper, we def
ine the concepts that are important to design methodology management s
ystems and explain how these systems relate to CAD frameworks. We then
examine and characterize 23 notable design methodology management sys
tems of the last 15 years in order to understand the state of the art.
Finally, we describe and analyze the trends we have seen in these sys
tems and propose where this technology is headed.