Customer Support built an on-call rota in a shared doc with a UI

“It's more of a prototype.”— Nadia, Customer Support

Reason:

Allegedly because the approval chain includes 3 people and one shared mailbox. Built during an offsite instead of the thing they were asked to build.

Built by:

Nadia, the management assistant

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Python and a cron job on a laptop

Database:

a column called do_not_use that is required

Authentication:

permissions are managed by copying another user's account

Deployment:

last deployed 623 days ago

Responsible:

Sarah, who has not touched it in 9 months

Documentation:

a PowerPoint with 29 slides

Security situation:

production secrets are in the frontend bundle

Future disaster:

It will become the source of truth in 5 months.

Age: 6.6 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 6 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €143k per year, alive 342x longer than intended, 31 users.