The "Strategic Job Analysis" for the air traffic control specialist occupation is one of my research tasks for FY2008 and beyond.

Dunnette and Peterson & Bownas proposed a job-by-person matrix back in 1983. In the mid-1990s, my laboratory sponsored work on framing or developing a methodology for actually building such a matrix. And now, 12 years later, the task is no longer theoretical, but real, with deadlines and expectations.

As a first approximation, I've started building an Excel workbook with 3 worksheets: a job-by-person matrix; job characteristics or attributes; and person attributes (e.g., knowledge, skill, abilities and other personal characteristics). I've taken the more-or-less updated version of the tower cab activities, sub-activities, and tasks based on the CTA, Inc. 1987 job/task analysis, as my starting point/test case. The lowest level of the hierarchy is task statements, and the Excel "Group" function is used to group tasks into sub-activities, and then sub-activities into activities. The trick to remember with Excel when grouping is that it is summation oriented, so the aggregated (grouped) label is beneath/under the grouped rows (or to the right if grouping columns). But by grouping task statements and KSAOs (worker requirements), I can build an approximation of what a job-by-person matrix might look like for the ATCS occupation.