R&D built Excel with a login screen

“Nobody knows the URL.”— Nadia, R&D

Reason:

Because the lunch prototype is now business critical. With 3 tests, all skipped.

Built by:

Nadia, a team lead

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

plain HTML and 1,900 lines of jQuery

Database:

a Git repository with one JSON file per customer

Authentication:

Katrin knows the password

Deployment:

last deployed 317 days ago

Responsible:

a project group that technically no longer exists

Documentation:

a 62 minute screen recording

Security situation:

debug mode is enabled in production

Future disaster:

It will make an audit take 6 extra weeks.

Age: 9.2 years · originally expected to last 3 months · 5 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 74 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 294 users, 32% chance of becoming business critical, alive 37x longer than intended.