The Front Desk built a travel request form

“We'll replace it next year.”— Thomas, The Front Desk

Reason:

Allegedly because the form takes 17 minutes to complete and times out after 10. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Thomas, the management assistant

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

a browser extension that somehow became business critical

Database:

a table called temp that has existed for 8 years

Authentication:

the office IP is allow-listed, including the coffee shop next door

Deployment:

deployed 52 minutes before the builder went on holiday

Responsible:

Thomas, who left 8 months ago

Documentation:

a Confluence page marked "draft", last edited 823 days ago

Security situation:

the tenant ID comes directly from the query string

Future disaster:

It will cause HR Generalist to request an immediate status meeting.

Age: 4.1 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 4 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 210 days ago · original builder left 1439 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 3 departments depend on it, alive 72x longer than intended, 32% chance of becoming business critical.