Operations built a certification expiry alerter

“We didn't have time for architecture.”— Jens, Operations

Reason:

Officially because Finance has a different spreadsheet. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Jens, the management assistant

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

a Rails app from 2016 nobody updated

Database:

a network drive mapped as Z: on three people's computers

Authentication:

passwords are stored in plaintext, for troubleshooting

Deployment:

running on port 8081 in production

Responsible:

whoever happens to be on call

Documentation:

one README with 9 TODOs

Security situation:

security is handled by being "internal only"

Future disaster:

It will stop working when Sofia leaves the company.

Age: 115 days · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 115 days ago · original builder left 44 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €68k per year, the builder has left, alive 5x longer than intended.