Customer Support built a sales dashboard nobody asked for

“Everyone using it is trustworthy.”— Chen, Customer Support

Reason:

Allegedly because the test account belongs to Kevin from a field technician. Started as Stock_list_old.csv with a script attached.

Built by:

Chen, a recruiter

Build time:

4 evenings

Built with:

Power Apps, licensed to one employee

Database:

an Access database called Leads.xlsx with 8 linked tables

Authentication:

there is one account called "user"

Deployment:

hosted on a cloud account costing €52.64/month

Responsible:

a steering committee that has not met in 8 months

Documentation:

a Miro board that takes 2 minutes to load

Security situation:

authorization happens entirely in the frontend

Future disaster:

It will round money differently from Finance.

Age: 6.8 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 4 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated legendary mostly because: 97% chance of becoming business critical, alive 119x longer than intended, older than the department using it.