Customer Support built a customer portal

“We can rebuild it properly later.”— Anja, Customer Support

Reason:

Officially because the bug was closed because nobody replied for 317 days. With a settings page that does nothing.

Built by:

Anja, a key account manager

Build time:

2 hours 22 minutes

Built with:

Excel macros, exposed over HTTP

Database:

Firestore because the prototype needed to ship by Friday

Authentication:

JWT validation checks that the token looks like a JWT

Deployment:

deployed manually because CI/CD "was taking too long"

Responsible:

Katrin, who insists they are not the owner

Documentation:

a README that begins with "temporary notes"

Security situation:

the app is secure because the browser shows a padlock

Future disaster:

It will silently stop syncing and nobody will notice for 4 months.

Age: 3.7 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 3 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 420 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 93 users, alive 64x longer than intended, 1 departments depend on it.