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App #834 Β· πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ the United States
Disaster score 361Rare

Legal built a demo environment that became production

Users240
Departments1
Criticality22%
Money involved€392/yr
β€œThe password is really long.”— Sarah, Legal
Reason:
Because the integration has been "temporarily disabled" for 8 months. With 24 users and zero documentation.
Built by:
Sarah, a team lead
Build time:
an afternoon, mostly
Built with:
React, Vite and enthusiasm
Database:
localStorage. That is the whole backend.
Authentication:
the intern has production access
Deployment:
deployed by emailing Suppliers_use-this-one.xlsx to Petra
Responsible:
Daniel, who has never seen the source code
Documentation:
none, but the variable names are "pretty clear"
Security situation:
the security review consisted of Thomas saying "looks fine"
Future disaster:
It will stop working when Olivier leaves the company.

Accidentally connected to (4)

  • β†’ scrapes the login-protected admin portal
  • β†’ depends on a browser extension
  • β†’ parses invoices from email attachments
  • β†’ uses OneDrive as a database backup

Age: 4.7 years Β· originally expected to last 3 months Β· 6 owners so far Β· survived 2 reorganisations Β· last meaningful change 823 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 240 users, 4 accidental connections, alive 19x longer than intended.

Current owner

Nobody has taken responsibility for this disaster.

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