Marketing built a demo environment that became production

“ChatGPT can probably regenerate it.”— Group Controller

Reason:

Officially because it was faster to build it than to explain it to IT Service Desk. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Elena, someone from Procurement

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Python and a cron job on a laptop

Database:

a REST API backed by another REST API backed by Excel

Authentication:

everyone uses the admin account

Deployment:

on a free tier that expires in 12 days

Responsible:

a contractor invoicing €1115/day through a third party

Documentation:

a Notion page with one sentence and 9 empty headings

Security situation:

a security review was scheduled for November and quietly cancelled

Future disaster:

It will turn out to be the only system that knows the real numbers.

Age: 1.5 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 420 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: €902k per year, 294 users, alive 40x longer than intended.