Internal Audit built a returns authorisation portal

“It's only temporary.”— IT Service Desk

Reason:

Because the form contains 48 fields and 6 of them are called "Other". Built during an offsite instead of the thing they were asked to build.

Built by:

Kevin, a warehouse supervisor

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

Python and a cron job on a laptop

Database:

a table called temp that has existed for 8 years

Authentication:

backups are encrypted with the same password as production

Deployment:

running with 78% memory usage and "seems fine"

Responsible:

Ravi and Lukas, who each think the other owns it

Documentation:

a Confluence page marked "draft", last edited 411 days ago

Security situation:

the admin page is protected by not linking to it

Future disaster:

It will acquire a workaround for the workaround.

Age: 1.2 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 19 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 82% chance of becoming business critical, 4 accidental connections, €198k per year.