Controlling built an employee onboarding checklist

“It's on a weird port.”— Kevin, Controlling

Reason:

Mainly because the dashboard disagrees with Finance by €2,400. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Kevin, an analyst

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

a REST API generated by something nobody can regenerate

Database:

a JSON file in Git called production-data.json

Authentication:

there is one account called "admin" and nobody knows who owns it

Deployment:

on a VM created for a workshop in 2020

Responsible:

Katrin and Tobias, who each think the other owns it

Documentation:

an email with the subject "quick overview"

Security situation:

the user's role is stored in localStorage

Future disaster:

It will stop working when Kevin leaves the company.

Age: 363 days · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €439k per year, 60 users, alive 26x longer than intended.