Someone From Operations built an internal app built because someone disliked one dropdown

“We just need it until SAP is updated.”— Sofia, Someone From Operations

Reason:

Honestly? Because the export button creates copy of copy of Leads_new2.csv, but nobody knows where. Quietly rolled out to two countries.

Built by:

Sofia, the management assistant

Build time:

3 evenings

Built with:

Excel macros with network access

Database:

an FTP server containing folders called NEW, NEW2 and FINAL

Authentication:

the secret is in README.md

Deployment:

deployed to staging, which customers are now using

Responsible:

Priya, who inherited it from Sofia by accident

Documentation:

a Confluence page linking to another Confluence page

Security situation:

the API key has never been rotated

Future disaster:

It will be replaced by a second version of itself.

Age: 78 days · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 19 days ago · original builder left 53 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €42k per year, the builder has left, alive 4x longer than intended.