Toward forming an effective team using social network

In this paper, we propose an algorithm for selecting a team of experts from a social network, which is represented by a weighted undirected graph. Each node in the graph represents an individual who has one or more skills. Different individuals can have the same skill but they might differ in their level of expertise (e.g., novice, medium, or expert). The communication cost between two individuals (nodes) is represented by the weight of the common edge (or path). The objective is to create an effective team that can carry out a specific task. The task is represented as a set of skills with specific level of expertise for each skill. An effective solution should suggest a set of individuals (nodes) who collectively meet the level of skillfulness required and at the same time guarantee low communication cost. We implemented the proposed algorithm and ran many simulation experiments to measure the cost effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.