An External Consultant built a monthly reporting tool

“It's just an Excel replacement.”— Marketing Manager

Reason:

Mainly because the CEO tested it on an iPad. With 819 users and zero documentation.

Built by:

Kevin, a controller

Build time:

2 hours 55 minutes

Built with:

Airtable plus four Zapier zaps and one mystery webhook

Database:

an API that returns CSV

Authentication:

the secret is in the screenshot in the README

Deployment:

deployed by emailing Customers_final.csv to Thomas

Responsible:

Sarah, who only knows the database

Documentation:

a PDF exported from PowerPoint

Security situation:

the API key is called PUBLIC_API_KEY

Future disaster:

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

Age: 2.5 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 6 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 19 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €252k per year, alive 66x longer than intended, 1 departments depend on it.