GitHub Project Bug: The Silent Issue Hijacker Impacting Your Productivity KPI Metrics

In the world of developer productivity, accurate tracking and reliable data are paramount for understanding workflow efficiency and maintaining robust GitHub statistics. A recent discussion in the GitHub Community highlights a critical bug within GitHub Projects that directly impacts this, causing issues to be created in the wrong repositories and, in some cases, vanish entirely. This isn't just a minor inconvenience; it's a significant UI/UX flaw that can skew your productivity KPI metrics and disrupt agile workflows.

The Core Problem: A UI/UX Conundrum

The Bug Report

The issue, reported by cmrn-rhi in Discussion #186293, details a frustrating experience within a GitHub Project configured to pull issues from multiple repositories and grouped by repository. When attempting to create a new issue for a specific repository, such as repo:pathogen-genomics-package, the "Create new issue" pop-up silently shifts its target. The user observed that the pop-up's header would change to "Create new issue in GenEpiO/genepio," implying the issue would be created in a different, unintended repository (repo:genepio). To compound the problem, some issues intended for the genepio repository would simply disappear after creation, never appearing in any repository.

This scenario is a nightmare for any team relying on precise issue tracking for their agile kpi dashboard. Imagine planning your sprints, allocating resources, and then discovering that critical tasks were either misfiled or, worse, never recorded at all. The ripple effect on project timelines and team morale can be substantial.

Initial Troubleshooting: The User Error Fallacy

Early suggestions, like those from Tamanna-Sharma8, often point to user error—incorrect repository selection, misconfigured automation, or issues stemming from working within a fork. While these are valid considerations for general issue creation problems, the specifics of this bug suggest a deeper system-level flaw. In a high-pressure development environment, blaming user error for a systemic UI problem can lead to frustration and a lack of trust in the tooling.

The Expert Perspective: More Than User Error

As healer0805 astutely points out, this is almost certainly a UI state / context-switching bug. The core problem appears to be that when the “Create new issue” modal opens inside a Project view that’s grouped by repository, the modal silently switches its target repository based on the project’s auto-pull rules. The header updates to a different repo, but the action context doesn’t make that change obvious or intentional. This explains both critical symptoms:

• You intend to create an issue in pathogen-genomics-package, but the modal flips to genepio without you explicitly selecting it.
• In some cases, the issue then disappears entirely, which suggests the create action is firing against a repo/context that no longer matches the project’s state (or fails validation and drops the request).

From a UX perspective, this is pretty dangerous:

• The modal implies you’re creating an issue in one repo while actually targeting another.
• There’s no confirmation or guardrail when the repo changes.
• If creation fails, there’s no error — the issue just vanishes.

At minimum, the modal should:

• Lock the repository context based on where the action was initiated, or
• Force the user to explicitly confirm the target repository if it changes, and
• Surface an error if issue creation fails instead of silently dropping it.

Given that genepio is an auto-pulled repo, this feels like a regression in how Projects resolves “default repo” for new issues when grouping + auto-add rules are involved. The disappearing issues are especially concerning, since that suggests failed creates with no feedback. This is absolutely worth treating as a bug, not a usage issue.

The Impact: Skewed Metrics, Lost Time, Eroding Trust

For dev teams, product managers, and CTOs, this bug isn't just an annoyance; it's a direct threat to operational efficiency and data integrity. Consider the implications:

• Inaccurate Productivity KPI Metrics: If issues are misfiled or vanish, your data on task completion, backlog health, and team velocity becomes unreliable. How can you accurately measure your productivity KPI metrics if the source data is flawed?
• Compromised Agile KPI Dashboard: An agile kpi dashboard relies on real-time, accurate data to provide insights into sprint progress, burndown rates, and team capacity. A bug like this can render your dashboard misleading, leading to poor decision-making and missed deadlines.
• Wasted Time and Effort: Developers and project managers waste valuable time searching for "missing" issues or correcting misfiled ones. This overhead directly reduces productive coding time and increases administrative burden.
• Erosion of Trust in Tooling: When a core tool like GitHub Projects behaves unpredictably, teams lose trust in its reliability. This can lead to workarounds, manual tracking (defeating the purpose of the tool), and a general reluctance to fully leverage the platform's capabilities.
• Skewed GitHub Statistics: For organizations that analyze their overall GitHub statistics for trends in development, contributions, or project health, this bug introduces noise and inaccuracies, making it harder to gain meaningful insights.

Mitigating the Risk: What Leaders Can Do Now

While we await a permanent fix from GitHub, teams can implement strategies to minimize the impact of this bug:

• Educate Your Team: Make sure all team members are aware of this potential issue. Encourage them to always double-check the "Create new issue in [Repo Name]" header in the pop-up before clicking "Create issue."
• Direct Issue Creation: For critical tasks, consider creating issues directly within the target repository's "Issues" tab rather than through the Project board's "Add item" functionality, especially if the project pulls from multiple repos.
• Regular Audits: Periodically audit your Project boards and linked repositories to identify misfiled or missing issues. Tools that integrate with GitHub APIs can help automate this process.
• Feedback to GitHub: Encourage your teams to upvote and comment on the original discussion or similar bug reports. The more visibility these issues get, the faster they are likely to be addressed.

Conclusion: The Imperative for Reliable Tooling

Reliable tooling is the bedrock of efficient software development. When fundamental features like issue creation become unpredictable, it directly undermines a team's ability to track progress, measure performance, and deliver value. For leaders focused on optimizing productivity KPI metrics and maintaining a transparent agile kpi dashboard, addressing such UI/UX bugs in critical platforms like GitHub is not merely about convenience—it's about safeguarding the integrity of your development process and the accuracy of your GitHub statistics. Let's hope GitHub prioritizes a swift resolution to ensure our issues go where they're intended, every time.