Business Intelligence built a fuel card register

“It only writes when necessary.”— Head of Operations

Reason:

Officially because somebody watched a 30 minute tutorial. With 501 users and zero documentation.

Built by:

Elena, a field technician

Build time:

2 evenings

Built with:

Redis, permanently

Database:

a column called do_not_use that is required

Authentication:

the shared account belongs to Sarah, who left 18 months ago

Deployment:

running in a region 8 time zones away from its users

Responsible:

Lukas, who insists they are not the owner

Documentation:

a screenshot of a photographed whiteboard

Security situation:

the penetration test found it by accident

Future disaster:

It will be mentioned in an audit finding using the words "material weakness".

Age: 58 days · originally expected to last 14 days · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 19 days ago · original builder left 31 days ago

Rated common mostly because: the builder has left, €25k per year, alive 4x longer than intended.