IT built a beta user tracker

“We have a backup somewhere.”— Tobias, IT

Reason:

Honestly? Because Sofia left 10 months ago. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Tobias, a product owner

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

an Electron app wrapping a website

Database:

two databases kept "mostly in sync"

Authentication:

SSO, but only for Priya

Deployment:

running in a region 7 time zones away from its users

Responsible:

nobody officially, Priya emotionally

Documentation:

a diagram on a whiteboard, photographed, then deleted

Security situation:

the last security review happened before the application existed

Future disaster:

It will get monitoring after the first outage.

Age: 5.9 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 3 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 19 days ago · original builder left 1488 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 307x longer than intended, €125k per year, 30% chance of becoming business critical.