An External Consultant built a lunch poll that became business critical

“The quarter ends Friday.”— Tobias, An External Consultant

Reason:

Officially because the budget expires on Tuesday. With a settings page that does nothing.

Built by:

Tobias, a field technician

Build time:

19 minutes

Built with:

React, Vite and enthusiasm

Database:

two databases kept "mostly in sync"

Authentication:

no login. It is on the intranet, so it is fine.

Deployment:

running on a laptop with 17% battery

Responsible:

IT Service Desk, who has never opened it

Documentation:

a Miro board with 141 sticky notes

Security situation:

every error response includes the full stack trace

Future disaster:

It will stop working the day the free tier ends.

Age: 66 days · originally expected to last 4 weeks · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 19 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 642 users, 54% chance of becoming business critical, €95k per year.