Field Service built an intercompany recharge calculator

“It's just a cron job.”— Managing Director

Reason:

Officially because the CEO tested it on an iPad. Forked from a tutorial at 23:49 and never cleaned up.

Built by:

Sarah, an analyst

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Vue, for personal reasons

Database:

Redis, but used permanently

Authentication:

the VPN password is the Wi-Fi password

Deployment:

hosted on a free trial using Elena's credit card

Responsible:

whoever answers the support email

Documentation:

a Loom video recorded at 1.5x speed

Security situation:

the service account is also a real employee

Future disaster:

It will get its own budget line before it gets an owner.

Age: 150 days · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 74 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 3 departments depend on it, 20% chance of becoming business critical, alive 11x longer than intended.