I have never heard of a reliable way to determine on paper the minimum combinations to cycle a given action. That doesn't mean there aren't any, just that none of them have found me. Unless I am trying to get a newby used to progressively heavier recoil to work up to a hunting load, I don't usually bother with minimum loads, unless they happen to be really accurate. (I have a wadcutter load in .38spec with a very light charge of BEYE that my little snubby loves, but my carry load is with UNQ in the +P range.) Now bearing in mind that every firearm is different, I have usually found that in semiautos a mid-range charge produces the best accuracy. There are exceptions, and you will find some guns that like hot loads and some that want squib loads, and the only way to find out what any particular gun likes is to try many combinations in it and compare the targets. A "pet load" is often specific to the gun it was worked up in. Sometimes you just get lucky and hit on a good combination right away. And sometimes you dont....
What are you going to use it for? Carry? Target? Hunting? Competition?
With most of my handguns, when I have found an acceptably accurate load for the given purpose, I tend to stick with it. That doesn't mean I won't try a new powder or boolit mould to see what they will do, but most of my load development these days is with rifles, usually milsurps, and cast boolits. I do some custom loading for hunters, too, but again mostly for rifles and usually jacketed bullets. Whenever I buy or trade for a new Contender barrel, though, I will jump into it until I find the right load.
I don't mess with my carry guns, except to practice with the chosen carry loads. I've had each of them a long time and have practiced with them until they are a part of my hand when I draw them. I like to be very used to those chosen loads and able to shoot them as instinctively as possible, not to have my head cluttered with details like "now, the POI is going to be a little low and left" that will get me or someone I care about killed if and when it hits the fan.
Target pistols are a whole different mindset. With them, I don't care how fast the boolit is going, only that it is the most accurate combination of powder and boolit that I have found so far. For me, the features that make a great target pistol (long sight radius & large adjustable rear sight or decent scope) are usually diametrically opposite the features that make a good carry gun (big bore, short barrel, light weight, and snag free). I might be persuaded to put those lighter springs in a target pistol if that very light load was really accurate.
My Contender, depending on the barrel, I use for both target and hunting, but it is primarily a hunting weapon. My criteria for hunting loads are: enough velocity to provide enough expansion for a clean kill at reasonable ranges with the chosen boolit/bullet. I tend to go for the highest velocity that give acceptable accuracy. I am not looking for the smallest possible groups necessarily, a six inch 100yd group for a deer load is acceptable if it moves at a few hundred fps faster than the two inch accuracy load. But, if there's a powder that will give me both velocity and best accuracy, I am grateful for the gift from the loading gods and use it happily.
I don't shoot competitively, so advice along those lines is to listen to someone who does.