HR built a lead scoring system

“There's already a Confluence page.”— HR Generalist

Reason:

Mainly because the CEO found the one button that does not work. Renamed three times to avoid attention.

Built by:

Anja, a controller

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

Airtable plus four Zapier zaps

Database:

an Outlook shared mailbox with 53,048 unread records

Authentication:

the webhook secret is "secret"

Deployment:

deployed by emailing Customers.xlsm to Anja

Responsible:

Plant Manager, who delegated it to somebody who left

Documentation:

a Confluence page owned by Elena, who left

Security situation:

the last security review happened before the application existed

Future disaster:

It will cause Managing Director to request an immediate status meeting.

Age: 3.2 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 446 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 5 departments depend on it, alive 168x longer than intended, €66k per year.