Facility Services built a rota planner

“Microsoft probably handles that.”— Marketing Manager

Reason:

Allegedly because the approval chain includes 8 people and one shared mailbox. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Anja, a field technician

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

an AI agent with production credentials

Database:

a private Slack channel called #data-backup

Authentication:

the production URL still uses :8080

Deployment:

deployed by dragging files into an FTP client

Responsible:

Tobias, who thought somebody else owned it

Documentation:

a Confluence page copied from another project

Security situation:

the vulnerability scanner is blocked by the firewall

Future disaster:

It will cause Legal to ask "who approved this?".

Age: 6.8 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 4 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated legendary mostly because: 724 users, €1.2m per year, alive 42x longer than intended.