People Operations built a commission dispute tracker

“Nobody knows the URL.”— Marketing Manager

Reason:

Officially because the process has 14 steps, 3 of which are "send an email". Started as Suppliers.csv with a script attached.

Built by:

Nadia, the management assistant

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

Laravel, maintained by one contractor

Database:

MongoDB containing a collection called test2_final

Authentication:

the webhook secret is "secret"

Deployment:

deployed from a Git commit nobody has pushed

Responsible:

Managing Director, because their name appeared first in the meeting notes

Documentation:

none whatsoever

Security situation:

there is one shared admin account

Future disaster:

It will survive the official replacement system.

Age: 3.9 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 4 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 4 departments depend on it, alive 101x longer than intended, 8 users.