Operations built a dog-in-the-office booking system

“It's only one container.”— Bastian, Operations

Reason:

Because the licence costs €8,600 plus a support contract. With a settings page that does nothing.

Built by:

Bastian, a team lead

Build time:

12 minutes

Built with:

a Notion database with increasingly ambitious automations

Database:

a Git repository with one JSON file per customer

Authentication:

the API accepts requests from anywhere with confidence

Deployment:

deployed by dragging files into an FTP client

Responsible:

Anja, who inherited it from Bastian by accident

Documentation:

a Confluence page marked "draft", last edited 411 days ago

Security situation:

the admin page is protected by not linking to it

Future disaster:

It will create a GDPR incident somebody describes as "probably minor".

Age: 1.9 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 452 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 4 departments depend on it, alive 49x longer than intended, €57k per year.