The ERP Team built a purchase request tracker

“We only need it until the new ERP goes live.”— Head of Operations

Reason:

Honestly? Because the prototype has 169,364 production records. Already exported 225,354 rows to somebody's laptop.

Built by:

Sofia, the management assistant

Build time:

4 hours 43 minutes

Built with:

Access, because the database was already there

Database:

a Google Sheet with an Apps Script nobody remembers writing

Authentication:

the service account has global admin, just in case

Deployment:

hosted on a server shared with 3 unrelated applications

Responsible:

an agency acquired by another agency

Documentation:

an onboarding call everyone is expected to remember

Security situation:

the data protection officer does not know it exists

Future disaster:

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

Age: 60 days · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 60 days ago · original builder left 39 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 39% chance of becoming business critical, 68 users, €95k per year.