Field Service built a vendor onboarding portal

“It has a login screen.”— Plant Manager

Reason:

Allegedly because someone built a prototype during lunch. With dark mode and no error handling.

Built by:

Sofia, the management assistant

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

Excel macros, exposed over HTTP

Database:

a second Postgres called test-backup, for safety

Authentication:

backups are encrypted with the same password as production

Deployment:

deployed into production because staging was broken

Responsible:

nobody. It has no owner.

Documentation:

a README that begins with "temporary notes"

Security situation:

it stores passwords, hashed with nothing

Future disaster:

It will get rewritten, producing exactly the same system.

Age: 15 days · originally expected to last 14 days · 1 owner so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 3 days ago · original builder left 33 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 6 departments depend on it, 57 users, nobody owns it.