Project Management Office built an overtime calculator

“The password is really long.”— Sarah, Project Management Office

Reason:

Mainly because Friday at 16:20 seemed like a reasonable time to deploy. Started as copy of copy of Budget2026_v2.xlsm with a script attached.

Built by:

Sarah, an intern

Build time:

12 minutes

Built with:

an AI agent with shell access

Database:

the legacy system's database through a read-only user with write permissions

Authentication:

the reset password button emails the old password back

Deployment:

on a VM created for a workshop in 2019

Responsible:

IT, according to Finance

Documentation:

a Miro board that takes 8 minutes to load

Security situation:

authorization happens entirely in the frontend

Future disaster:

It will turn out to contain the only correct customer addresses.

Age: 7.4 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 3 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 50% chance of becoming business critical, alive 45x longer than intended, older than the department using it.