🪞 The illusion of project meta-data

Many tools exist for managing and tracking projects: Jira, Trello, GitHub projects/issues, Notion, Airtable, Asana, MS Project, etc. These all can be very useful. Why then does effective project tracking remain so elusive? As mentioned in the previous post, in a typical scenario, things appear to progress well. Issues get checked off. The burn-down chart tracks the line. But out of nowhere, monsters (bugs, unanticipated feature requests, and integration problems) appear that catch everyone off guard.

Several factors contribute to this problem. Foremost, the meta-data is exactly that — "meta." It is data about something; it is not the thing. There is no guarantee it is complete and accurate. If the focus stays on the meta-data, the meta-data will (perhaps unknowingly) be gamed to look good. If developers get rewarded for checking issues off every sprint, they will eventually make sure that happens, even though quality, maintainability, and other factors suffer.

I love tools, and use them every chance I get. I write new tools to solve problems. Tools are what amplify our efforts. But tools in themselves don't seem to be the answer. How can we ensure our meta-data is accurate and not missing things? How can we know our tools are not lying to us?