CEO Office built a warehouse label printer web app

“It's not really an application.”— Petra, CEO Office

Reason:

Allegedly because the official form has 52 fields and not the one that matters. With 2 users, one of whom is the CEO.

Built by:

Petra, a product owner

Build time:

1 hours 16 minutes

Built with:

Excel macros, exposed over HTTP

Database:

an SQLite file called backup(1).db

Authentication:

the production token is in a Jira ticket

Deployment:

deployed to staging, which customers are now using

Responsible:

an intern whose contract ended in March

Documentation:

a README describing a version that no longer exists

Security situation:

production secrets are in Git history

Future disaster:

It will become impossible to shut down because 5 other tools depend on it.

Age: 2.9 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 3 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 3 days ago · original builder left 726 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 632 users, 43% chance of becoming business critical, alive 76x longer than intended.