Document Management built a KPI wall for a screen nobody looks at

“Sales already promised it.”— Marketing Manager

Reason:

Honestly? Because the architecture diagram contains a box labelled "manual step". With 875 users and zero documentation.

Built by:

Thomas, a product owner

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

an internal API copied from a Stack Overflow answer

Database:

one table called data

Authentication:

backups are encrypted with the same password as production

Deployment:

behind a domain that still contains the word demo

Responsible:

Olivier, who insists they are not the owner

Documentation:

a Slack message saying "I'll document this later"

Security situation:

production secrets are in .env.example

Future disaster:

It will eventually need a migration project larger than the app itself.

Age: 6.0 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 178 users, 6 departments depend on it, alive 104x longer than intended.