The best datascience projects are ones that started collecting good data 3 months ago. The hardest thing I've had to do is convince engineers to involve DS people in the design phase of their work. Initially they just don't see us, or see us as an annoying extra stakeholder. But it's more annoying to go back to already deployed code and add data collection to it and then waiting, so they learn fast. Anyways, like the OP's link says, there's no magic modelling work that can bring back those missing features and data.