Bilkent University
Department of Computer Engineering
CS 590/690 SEMINAR
Predicting the Next Generation of Key Developers in Software Projects
Fereshteh Vedadi
Ph.D. Student
(Supervisor: Asst.Prof.Eray Tüzün)
Computer Engineering Department
Bilkent University
Abstract: In software projects, certain developers hold significant influence either by overseeing the entire project, focusing on specific components, or facilitating communication and coordination among teams. These key developers are vital in ensuring the project’s overall success and ongoing maintenance. Given the significance of these individuals, proactively predicting them enables organizations to gain a competitive edge by nurturing their future talents. Numerous studies have focused on identifying a developer’s current role in software projects across various contexts. However, there are limited investigations into forecasting a developer’s future role within a project. This study addresses this gap by proposing a methodology to predict future key developers of a project based on developers’ initial activities. Our approach leverages four established predictive models: k-Nearest Neighbors, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Naïve Bayes, trained on a set of features inspired by sports analytics. These features are analogous to those used to assess athletes’ performance in different kinds of sports and emphasize the evaluation of developers’ technical proficiency and collaborative dynamics within their first six months of contribution to software projects. We assessed our methodology across four open-source projects: Vuejs-Core, Spring-Security, Moby, and Gitea. Based on the obtained results, the proposed methodology, employing Random Forest, proved to be the most effective model, achieving up to 71.18% F1 Score in predicting key developers based on their historical performance and collaboration metrics utilizing two different sources of ground truth data. By enhancing the prediction accuracy, our approach not only provides a framework for organizations to predict and cultivate future key developers proactively but also supports the long-term success and sustainability of software projects.
DATE: December 9, Monday @ 16:10 Place: EA 502