Contract Management built a customer incident tracker

“The service account needs those permissions.”— Plant Manager

Reason:

Officially because the CEO found the one button that does not work. With 575 users and 91 feature requests.

Built by:

Daniel, a working student

Build time:

2 evenings

Built with:

Excel macros, exposed over HTTP

Database:

a SQL Server instance called prod that nobody is allowed to restart

Authentication:

the token expiration date is optional

Deployment:

deployed by dragging files into an FTP client

Responsible:

a team that has since been reorganised

Documentation:

comments in the code explaining what the code used to do

Security situation:

MFA was disabled after somebody lost their phone

Future disaster:

It will outlive two reorganisations.

Age: 1.7 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 618 days ago · original builder left 149 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 137 users, alive 88x longer than intended, the builder has left.