Looking at the Foundation, the history development and the target of one coin can help you find out a good coin. IOTA, Monero, Ripple, Ethereum are those coins.
Yes, These are the common ways of collecting information and judging the future of any coin, the tendency of coin to survive in the ocean of digital currencies.
By looking at the team of particular coin, you get a good idea about the features of the coin because a good technical team can only produce some good quality coin which can compete with other rivals in the crypto market. You should add litecoin and neo in the list as well.
I look at their whitepaper, business documents, technical papers and team structures.
This always help me a lot to understand if one coin is working or not. This is important to understand their actual value of future.