Final answer:
In deploying profiles and permission sets, a Package is used to deploy individual user permissions, while the Exclude Rule can be used to avoid deploying work in progress or enforce the use of permission sets for granting permissions.
Step-by-step explanation:
When deploying profiles and permissions sets with a Package, individual user permissions are deployed. To manage the progress of user permissions and ensure that work in progress isn’t deployed, or to enforce the use of permission sets for granting user permissions, the Exclude Rule is used.
This particular functionality is pertinent to systems where permissions need to be managed carefully, often in a software development or IT administration context, where profiles and permission sets control what users can do within a system or application. By using a Package, you are able to bundle individual components for deployment, which includes user permissions that are precisely defined within the profile or permission set. If there is a need to avoid deploying certain permissions, the Exclude Rule is a mechanism provided to selectively ignore or exclude specific permissions or profiles from being deployed with the package, thus keeping in-progress work or undesired permissions from being pushed to the live environment before they are ready.