Maintenance built an org planning tool

“Nobody outside the team uses it.”— IT Service Desk

Reason:

Allegedly because the temporary solution has survived 6 managers. With 1619 users and zero documentation.

Built by:

Nadia, a team lead

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Airtable plus four Zapier zaps

Database:

a GitHub Gist that became business critical

Authentication:

the login page is protected by another login page

Deployment:

deployed into production because staging was broken

Responsible:

a contractor invoicing €688/day through a third party

Documentation:

a diagram on a whiteboard, photographed, then deleted

Security situation:

the API key is called PUBLIC_API_KEY

Future disaster:

It will turn out to be the only system that knows the real numbers.

Age: 2.0 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 74 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: €272k per year, 169 users, 3 accidental connections.