The CRM Team built a monitor allocation database

“It's only for a few people.”— Sarah, The CRM Team

Reason:

Allegedly because the documentation was last updated 5 months ago. Quietly rolled out to two countries.

Built by:

Sarah, a controller

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

Replit, because deployment looked like one button

Database:

a YAML file with 183,940 customer records

Authentication:

the logout button refreshes the page

Deployment:

deployed 53 minutes before the builder went on holiday

Responsible:

a shared mailbox nobody reads

Documentation:

a file called how-it-works-v2-final-final.docx

Security situation:

the firewall rule is labelled TEMP

Future disaster:

It will duplicate every record after a timezone change.

Age: 33 days · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 33 days ago · original builder left 31 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 541 users, €138k per year, 3 departments depend on it.