Marketing Operations built a custom CRM for four customers

“It's basically Power Apps.”— Group Controller

Reason:

Mainly because Sofia has the only working copy of Suppliers_new2_new.xlsm. Built during an offsite instead of the thing they were asked to build.

Built by:

Tobias, a controller

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

ChatGPT, copy, paste, repeat

Database:

three databases, each claiming to be the source of truth

Authentication:

one shared password, written on a sticky note in the meeting room

Deployment:

kept alive by a scheduled task every 7 minutes

Responsible:

Ravi, who inherited it from Tobias by accident

Documentation:

a PDF exported from PowerPoint

Security situation:

production secrets are in a Slack message

Future disaster:

It will fail five minutes before a board meeting.

Age: 25 days · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 19 days ago · original builder left 44 days ago

Rated common mostly because: the builder has left, 1 departments depend on it, alive 2x longer than intended.