Minor Pieces: The minor pieces are, of course, knights and bishops. You should look at the positioning and influence of your knights and bishops and do the same for your opponent's knights and bishops. Are they on good squares? Do they control important squares (i.e., bishops on open diagonals, knights of the edge)? Should they be traded? If they are not performing important roles, it would be a good idea to trade them off for the opponent's pieces which are performing important roles. However, don't trade off your good piece for opponent's passive one.
Pawn Structure: Often the pawn structure is an important factor in determining what plans are available to you. Some of the themes of pawn structure are doubled, isolated, backward, and passed pawns.
Space: Space often determines whether knights or bishops are preferable. The importance of development is also determined by space. Quick development is important no matter what, but often there is a lot more time develop and maneuver in closed positions.
Material: It may appear easy to see who has a material advantage or if the material is equal, but it is also important to look at how strong each side's pieces are.
Files and squares: Files, ranks, and diagonals are all lines through which pieces are able to exert their influence and control. But squares are the "homes" of pieces. Silman mentions that "whole plans can center around the domination of a file, or the creation of a weak square in the enemy camp."
Development: Are the knights, bishops, rooks, queen, and king developed (or castled)? Generally you want to have all your pieces developed before attacking.
Initiative: Silman describes this a "dictating the tempo of a game." The attacking player is the player with initiative. Initiative can result from an advantage in time and/or space.
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