Contract Management built a support escalation tracker

“There's already a Confluence page.”— IT Service Desk

Reason:

Mainly because Katrin has the only working copy of Headcount_final.xlsm. Started as Customers_old.csv with a script attached.

Built by:

Bastian, a field technician

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

an AI agent with production credentials

Database:

a folder called DATABASE

Authentication:

the VPN password is the Wi-Fi password

Deployment:

deployed 54 minutes before the builder went on holiday

Responsible:

a contractor invoicing €1018/day through a third party

Documentation:

an onboarding call everyone is expected to remember

Security situation:

the API key has never been rotated

Future disaster:

It will be replaced by an Excel file during the migration.

Age: 6.7 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 4 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 823 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 176x longer than intended, 20% chance of becoming business critical, older than the department using it.