Constructing Developer Compatibility Graphs for Team Formation: An Industrial Case Study
Resumo
[Context]. Forming effective software teams remains difficult, especially in large organizations that juggle many parallel projects; existing compatibility models either rely on subjective personality traits or demand extensive historical data. [Objective] We introduce a lightweight, hybrid method that fuses minimal project metrics with expert judgment to build a weighted compatibility graph of developers. [Method] In an industrial case study (300+ professionals), a senior technical leader labeled eight synthetic collaboration scenarios that span the space of Objective Success Factor (OSF) and Subjective Leadership Factor (SLF). Those labels calibrated an ordinary-least-squares regression that also includes a saturation term for repeated pairings; the model was then applied to the organization’s project history. [Results] The regression achieved a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.11 and a Pearson correlation of 0.86 against the expert ground truth. When rolled out to real data (62 developers, 147 valid pairs), it produced PC weights ranging from 0.12 to 0.93, uncovered four cohesive clusters, and highlighted several bridge developers—information that managers subsequently used to re-balance squads. [Conclusion] By combining three readily available project metrics with a small set of expert-labeled scenarios, our method yields a transparent compatibility graph that matches the utility of data-hungry black-box models. It equips managers with an out-of-the-box aid for data-driven team design and provides researchers with a replicable blueprint for analyzing collaboration in data-constrained environments.
Palavras-chave:
Bayesian Networks, Software Team Formation, Software Engineering, Knowledge Engineering, Expert Systems
Referências
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Alexandre Costa, Felipe Ramos, Mirko Perkusich, Emanuel Dantas, Ednaldo Dilorenzo, Ferdinandy Chagas, André Meireles, Danyllo Albuquerque, Luiz Silva, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2020. Team Formation in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study. IEEE Access 8 (2020), 145687–145712. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3015017
Alexandre Costa, Felipe Ramos, Mirko Perkusich, Ademar De Sousa Neto, Luiz Silva, Felipe Cunha, Thiago Rique, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2022. A genetic algorithm-based approach to support forming multiple scrum project teams. IEEE Access 10 (2022), 68981–68994.
Felipe Cunha, Mirko Perkusich, Danyllo Albuquerque, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2025. A Genetic Algorithm with Convex Combination Crossover for Software Team Formation: Integrating Technical and Collaboration Skills. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing. 146–153.
Felipe Cunha, Mirko Perkusich, Danyllo Albuquerque, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2025. TeamPlus: A data-driven tool utilizing a Genetic Algorithm for optimal software team formation. SoftwareX 30 (2025), 102174.
Felipe Cunha, Thiago Rique, Mirko Perkusich, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2022. A data-driven framework to support team formation in software projects. In Workshop Brasileiro de Engenharia de Software Inteligente (ISE). SBC, 7–12.
Radin Hamidi Rad, Ebrahim Bagheri, Mehdi Kargar, Divesh Srivastava, and Jaroslaw Szlichta. 2021. Retrieving Skill-Based Teams from Collaboration Networks. In Proceedings of the 44th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. ACM, 2015–2019. DOI: 10.1145/3404835.3463105
Radin Hamidi Rad, Hossein Fani, Ebrahim Bagheri, Mehdi Kargar, Divesh Srivastava, and Jaroslaw Szlichta. 2023. A variational neural architecture for skill-based team formation. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 42, 1 (2023), 1–28.
Radin Hamidi Rad, Hossein Fani, Mehdi Kargar, Jaroslaw Szlichta, and Ebrahim Bagheri. 2020. Learning to Form Skill-based Teams of Experts. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management. ACM, 2049–2052. DOI: 10.1145/3340531.3412140
Julio Juárez, Cipriano (Pano) Santos, and Carlos A. Brizuela. 2021. A Comprehensive Review and a Taxonomy Proposal of Team Formation Problems. ACM Comput. Surv. 54, 7, Article 153 (July 2021), 33 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3465399
Kareem Kamel, Noor Tubaiz, Osama AlKoky, and Zaher AlAghbari. 2011. Toward forming an effective team using social network. In 2011 International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology. IEEE, 308–312. DOI: 10.1109/innovations.2011.5893839
Theodoros Lappas, Kun Liu, and Evimaria Terzi. 2009. Finding a team of experts in social networks. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining. ACM, 467–476. DOI: 10.1145/1557019.1557074
Radin Hamidi Rad, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Mehdi Kargar, Morteza Zihayat, and Ebrahim Bagheri. 2022. A Neural Approach to Forming Coherent Teams in Collaboration Networks. DOI: 10.48786/EDBT.2022.37
Silja Renooij and Cilia Witteman. 1999. Talking probabilities: communicating probabilistic information with words and numbers. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning 22, 3 (1999), 169–194.
Thiago Rique, Mirko Perkusich, Emanuel Dantas, Danyllo Albuquerque, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2023. On Adopting Software Analytics for Managerial Decision-Making: A Practitioner’s Perspective. IEEE Access 11 (2023), 73145–73163. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3294823
Pisol Ruenin, Morakot Choetkiertikul, Akara Supratak, and Suppawong Tuarob. 2024. TeReKG: A temporal collaborative knowledge graph framework for software team recommendation. Knowledge-Based Systems 289 (4 2024), 111492. DOI: 10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111492
Mahdis Saeedi, Hawre Hosseini, Christine Wong, and Hossein Fani. 2025. A Survey of Subgraph Optimization for Expert Team Formation. ACM Comput. Surv. 57, 12, Article 314 (July 2025), 40 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3737455
Daniel Schall. 2016. Skill-based team formation in software ecosystems. (2016), 35–41.
Damjan Strnad and Nikola Guid. 2010. A fuzzy-genetic decision support system for project team formation. Applied soft computing 10, 4 (2010), 1178–1187.
Suppawong Tuarob, Noppadol Assavakamhaenghan, Waralee Tanaphantaruk, Ponlakit Suwanworaboon, Saeed-Ul Hassan, and Morakot Choetkiertikul. 2021. Automatic team recommendation for collaborative software development. Empirical Software Engineering 26, 4 (2021), 64.
Sai Datta Vishnubhotla, Emilia Mendes, and Lars Lundberg. 2020. Investigating the relationship between personalities and agile team climate of software professionals in a telecom company. Information and Software Technology 126 (2020), 106335.
Xinyu Wang, Zhou Zhao, and Wilfred Ng. 2015. A comparative study of team formation in social networks. In International conference on database systems for advanced applications. Springer, 389–404.
Jared Willard, Xiaowei Jia, Shaoming Xu, Michael Steinbach, and Vipin Kumar. 2022. Integrating scientific knowledge with machine learning for engineering and environmental systems. Comput. Surveys 55, 4 (2022), 1–37.
Claes Wohlin, Per Runeson, Martin Höst, Magnus C Ohlsson, Björn Regnell, Anders Wesslén, et al. 2012. Experimentation in software engineering. Vol. 236. Springer.
Vivek Singh Baghel and S. Durga Bhavani. 2018. Multiple Team Formation Using an Evolutionary Approach. In 2018 Eleventh International Conference on Contemporary Computing (IC3). IEEE, 1–6. DOI: 10.1109/ic3.2018. 8530662
Alexandre Costa, Felipe Ramos, Mirko Perkusich, Emanuel Dantas, Ednaldo Dilorenzo, Ferdinandy Chagas, André Meireles, Danyllo Albuquerque, Luiz Silva, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2020. Team Formation in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study. IEEE Access 8 (2020), 145687–145712. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3015017
Alexandre Costa, Felipe Ramos, Mirko Perkusich, Ademar De Sousa Neto, Luiz Silva, Felipe Cunha, Thiago Rique, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2022. A genetic algorithm-based approach to support forming multiple scrum project teams. IEEE Access 10 (2022), 68981–68994.
Felipe Cunha, Mirko Perkusich, Danyllo Albuquerque, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2025. A Genetic Algorithm with Convex Combination Crossover for Software Team Formation: Integrating Technical and Collaboration Skills. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing. 146–153.
Felipe Cunha, Mirko Perkusich, Danyllo Albuquerque, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2025. TeamPlus: A data-driven tool utilizing a Genetic Algorithm for optimal software team formation. SoftwareX 30 (2025), 102174.
Felipe Cunha, Thiago Rique, Mirko Perkusich, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2022. A data-driven framework to support team formation in software projects. In Workshop Brasileiro de Engenharia de Software Inteligente (ISE). SBC, 7–12.
Radin Hamidi Rad, Ebrahim Bagheri, Mehdi Kargar, Divesh Srivastava, and Jaroslaw Szlichta. 2021. Retrieving Skill-Based Teams from Collaboration Networks. In Proceedings of the 44th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. ACM, 2015–2019. DOI: 10.1145/3404835.3463105
Radin Hamidi Rad, Hossein Fani, Ebrahim Bagheri, Mehdi Kargar, Divesh Srivastava, and Jaroslaw Szlichta. 2023. A variational neural architecture for skill-based team formation. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 42, 1 (2023), 1–28.
Radin Hamidi Rad, Hossein Fani, Mehdi Kargar, Jaroslaw Szlichta, and Ebrahim Bagheri. 2020. Learning to Form Skill-based Teams of Experts. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management. ACM, 2049–2052. DOI: 10.1145/3340531.3412140
Julio Juárez, Cipriano (Pano) Santos, and Carlos A. Brizuela. 2021. A Comprehensive Review and a Taxonomy Proposal of Team Formation Problems. ACM Comput. Surv. 54, 7, Article 153 (July 2021), 33 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3465399
Kareem Kamel, Noor Tubaiz, Osama AlKoky, and Zaher AlAghbari. 2011. Toward forming an effective team using social network. In 2011 International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology. IEEE, 308–312. DOI: 10.1109/innovations.2011.5893839
Theodoros Lappas, Kun Liu, and Evimaria Terzi. 2009. Finding a team of experts in social networks. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining. ACM, 467–476. DOI: 10.1145/1557019.1557074
Radin Hamidi Rad, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Mehdi Kargar, Morteza Zihayat, and Ebrahim Bagheri. 2022. A Neural Approach to Forming Coherent Teams in Collaboration Networks. DOI: 10.48786/EDBT.2022.37
Silja Renooij and Cilia Witteman. 1999. Talking probabilities: communicating probabilistic information with words and numbers. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning 22, 3 (1999), 169–194.
Thiago Rique, Mirko Perkusich, Emanuel Dantas, Danyllo Albuquerque, Kyller Gorgônio, Hyggo Almeida, and Angelo Perkusich. 2023. On Adopting Software Analytics for Managerial Decision-Making: A Practitioner’s Perspective. IEEE Access 11 (2023), 73145–73163. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3294823
Pisol Ruenin, Morakot Choetkiertikul, Akara Supratak, and Suppawong Tuarob. 2024. TeReKG: A temporal collaborative knowledge graph framework for software team recommendation. Knowledge-Based Systems 289 (4 2024), 111492. DOI: 10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111492
Mahdis Saeedi, Hawre Hosseini, Christine Wong, and Hossein Fani. 2025. A Survey of Subgraph Optimization for Expert Team Formation. ACM Comput. Surv. 57, 12, Article 314 (July 2025), 40 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3737455
Daniel Schall. 2016. Skill-based team formation in software ecosystems. (2016), 35–41.
Damjan Strnad and Nikola Guid. 2010. A fuzzy-genetic decision support system for project team formation. Applied soft computing 10, 4 (2010), 1178–1187.
Suppawong Tuarob, Noppadol Assavakamhaenghan, Waralee Tanaphantaruk, Ponlakit Suwanworaboon, Saeed-Ul Hassan, and Morakot Choetkiertikul. 2021. Automatic team recommendation for collaborative software development. Empirical Software Engineering 26, 4 (2021), 64.
Sai Datta Vishnubhotla, Emilia Mendes, and Lars Lundberg. 2020. Investigating the relationship between personalities and agile team climate of software professionals in a telecom company. Information and Software Technology 126 (2020), 106335.
Xinyu Wang, Zhou Zhao, and Wilfred Ng. 2015. A comparative study of team formation in social networks. In International conference on database systems for advanced applications. Springer, 389–404.
Jared Willard, Xiaowei Jia, Shaoming Xu, Michael Steinbach, and Vipin Kumar. 2022. Integrating scientific knowledge with machine learning for engineering and environmental systems. Comput. Surveys 55, 4 (2022), 1–37.
Claes Wohlin, Per Runeson, Martin Höst, Magnus C Ohlsson, Björn Regnell, Anders Wesslén, et al. 2012. Experimentation in software engineering. Vol. 236. Springer.
Publicado
23/09/2025
Como Citar
CUNHA, Felipe; PERKUSICH, Mirko; ALBUQUERQUE, Danyllo; DANTAS FILHO, Emanuel; GORGÔNIO, Kyller; PERKUSICH, Angelo.
Constructing Developer Compatibility Graphs for Team Formation: An Industrial Case Study. In: WORKSHOP BRASILEIRO DE ENGENHARIA DE SOFTWARE INTELIGENTE (ISE), 4. , 2025, Recife/PE.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2025
.
p. 31-36.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/ise.2025.14879.
