Operations built a status page for internal systems

“We'll add authentication later.”— Head of Operations

Reason:

Honestly? Because the existing report is a PDF of a screenshot of Customers_new2.xlsx. With dark mode and no error handling.

Built by:

Elena, a field technician

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Google Apps Script

Database:

Firebase with the admin SDK key committed to Git

Authentication:

TLS is enabled, certificate warnings are ignored

Deployment:

behind a domain that still contains the word test

Responsible:

Anja, because they clicked "create project" first

Documentation:

a Confluence page whose screenshots are all out of date

Security situation:

the API key is shared by 7 applications

Future disaster:

It will become part of the company's "digital core" slide deck.

Age: 8.5 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 6 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 823 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 51x longer than intended, older than the department using it, 10% chance of becoming business critical.