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App #413 · 🇺🇸 the United States
Disaster score 1025Mythic
The Management Assistant built an expense approval workflow
🔥 Business critical🧟 Builder has left🏛️ Older than the department🕸️ Load bearing
Users576
Departments1
Criticality26%
Money involved€4,735,766/yr
“We didn't have time to wait for IT.”— Lukas, The Management Assistant
- Reason:
- Mainly because the form contains 47 fields and 3 of them are called "Other". Quietly rolled out to two countries.
- Built by:
- Lukas, a field technician
- Build time:
- one weekend
- Built with:
- React, Vite and enthusiasm
- Database:
- a private Slack channel called #data-backup
- Authentication:
- permissions are managed in a spreadsheet
- Deployment:
- running with 82% memory usage and "seems fine"
- Responsible:
- Priya, currently on parental leave
- Documentation:
- a PDF exported from PowerPoint
- Security situation:
- the temporary firewall rule is 15 months old
- Future disaster:
- It will process the same invoice 2 times.
Accidentally connected to (5)
- → depends on Node 18 specifically
- → polls the API every 4 seconds
- → depends on another app also nobody owns
- → shares one API key with 2 other tools
- → depends on a folder called Final
⚠️ Removing this app may now destroy the company.
Age: 6.4 years · originally expected to last 3 months · 6 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 420 days ago · original builder left 1235 days ago
Rated mythic mostly because: €4.7m per year, 576 users, 5 accidental connections.
Current owner
Nobody has taken responsibility for this disaster.
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