An intern built a performance review form

“Nobody outside the team uses it.”— Plant Manager

Reason:

Officially because the audit is in 11 weeks. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Ravi, a product owner

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

Excel macros, exposed over HTTP

Database:

an Outlook shared mailbox with 202,803 unread records

Authentication:

email magic links to Thomas's personal Gmail

Deployment:

on a free tier that expires in 20 days

Responsible:

the business

Documentation:

comments that say "do not change this"

Security situation:

password reset emails contain the old password

Future disaster:

It will stop working after someone renames a column.

Age: 7.0 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 5 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 823 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 183x longer than intended, €37k per year, older than the department using it.