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App #27 · 🇬🇧 the United Kingdom
Disaster score 570Legendary
The Management Assistant built yet another project tracker
☠️ No known owner🧟 Builder has left💀 Direct production access
Users11
Departments2
Criticality13%
Money involved€57,375/yr
“It's basically a spreadsheet with buttons.”— Miriam, The Management Assistant
- Reason:
- Mainly because two teams disagreed about a column name for 6 weeks. Renamed twice to avoid attention.
- Built by:
- Miriam, someone from Procurement
- Build time:
- 7 evenings
- Built with:
- Power Apps, licensed to one employee
- Database:
- the production database, directly, with write access
- Authentication:
- a URL 72 characters long, which counts as security
- Deployment:
- on a Raspberry Pi in the server room
- Responsible:
- a shared mailbox nobody reads
- Documentation:
- a diagram on a whiteboard, photographed, then deleted
- Security situation:
- it was reviewed once, by Miriam, who built it
- Future disaster:
- It will be presented at a conference as a success story.
Accidentally connected to (2)
- → syncs with copy of copy of Suppliers_use-this-one.xlsx on a shared drive
- → shares one API key with 3 other tools
Age: 340 days · originally expected to last 4 weeks · 1 owner so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 19 days ago · original builder left 130 days ago
Rated legendary mostly because: 2 accidental connections, direct production access, €57k per year.
Current owner
Nobody has taken responsibility for this disaster.
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