GitHub Project Migration Glitch: 'Move Work' Wizard Misses User Projects, Impacting Development Tracking

GitHub Projects are a cornerstone for many teams, serving as a vital development tracking tool to organize work, manage tasks, and streamline workflows. The ability to seamlessly move projects between personal accounts and organizations is crucial for maintaining productivity and adapting to evolving team structures. However, a recent community discussion highlights a significant hurdle in this process, impacting how developers manage their work on GitHub.

GitHub Project Migration Glitch: 'Move Work' Wizard Misses User Projects

A developer, A1-NWS-Dev1, initiated a discussion after encountering a puzzling issue with GitHub’s native “Move work to an organization” wizard. The goal was straightforward: transfer repositories and GitHub Projects from a personal account to an organization where the user held 'Owner' status. While the wizard correctly detected and listed personal repositories for transfer, it conspicuously failed to recognize any user-owned GitHub Projects, displaying the message: “You do not have any projects.”

Verifying Project Presence: CLI vs. UI Discrepancy

The core of the problem lies in a discrepancy between GitHub’s user interface and its command-line interface (CLI) and API. A1-NWS-Dev1 meticulously verified the existence and ownership of the projects using the GitHub CLI, a robust performance development tool for interacting with GitHub. The results were clear:

gh project list --owner
NUMBER TITLE STATE
2      open
1      open

Further verification with gh project view --owner --format json confirmed that the projects were indeed open and owned by a ‘User’ type account. This strong evidence contradicted the wizard’s assertion, raising questions about its underlying enumeration logic.

Troubleshooting and GitHub Support's Response

A1-NWS-Dev1 performed extensive troubleshooting, confirming all prerequisites:

• Projects were open and personally owned.
• The destination organization was owned by the user, had Projects enabled, and allowed new project creation.
• The wizard successfully detected repositories, isolating the issue specifically to Projects.

After exhausting self-help options, the developer contacted GitHub Support. Initially, support suggested a backend re-indexing job, advising a 24-hour wait. Unfortunately, this attempt proved unsuccessful. The "Move Work" wizard continued to report zero projects, even after the re-indexing was completed. This highlights a potential gap in the reliability of this specific migration feature, which could lead users to seek a Waydev alternative for project management if such core functionalities are inconsistent.

Ongoing Investigation and Impact on Development Tracking

The issue remains unresolved, with A1-NWS-Dev1 pursuing further investigation with GitHub Support under an upgraded GitHub Pro account. The original failing condition has been preserved to aid in debugging, indicating a commitment to finding a root cause. This incident underscores the importance of robust and reliable tools for managing development tracking tool initiatives. When native migration paths are unclear or fail, it creates unnecessary friction and can deter developers from fully leveraging GitHub's project management capabilities.

Steps to Reproduce (as reported by A1-NWS-Dev1)

1. Have an open GitHub Project owned by a personal account.
2. Go to Settings → Organizations.
3. Select Move work to an organization.
4. On the page for selecting work to move, observe that personal repositories are listed.
5. Check the Projects section.
6. Actual result: You do not have any projects
7. Expected result: The open user-owned Projects should be available for selection.

What This Means for Your Development Tracking

For teams and individual developers relying on GitHub Projects for their development tracking tool needs, this discussion highlights a critical area for improvement. While GitHub offers powerful features, inconsistencies in core workflows like project migration can disrupt productivity. Keeping an eye on community discussions and official updates is key to navigating such challenges and ensuring your performance development tool stack remains efficient and reliable.