1 Applications of the Profile Theory to Software

Multifaceted knowledge encompassing people’s qualifications, resource capabilities and compatibilities provides an empirical basis for organisations to learn from their experiences. This knowledge ensures improvement of project workforce quality, which is critical not only for modern processes but also to maintain a competitive superiority. However, many process modelling and project management approaches fail to incorporate and then capitalise upon human resources and their experiences. Consequently, there is a need to develop techniques for describing and registering knowledge about project resources, in addition to providing support for effective solutions to software engineering problems. This paper presents a formal approach to human resource modelling. A new notion of profile is introduced and then applied not only for knowledge representation of project resources, but also to individual and team modelling. Compatibility metric is defined and used for determination of alternative team structures. Thus, it is shown that profile may be used not only as a method for knowledge representation but also as a tool for solutions to process engineering tasks.