Works Council built a supplier invoice dispute tracker

“There's already a Confluence page.”— Finance Business Partner

Reason:

Mainly because someone called it "basically just CRUD". With dark mode and no error handling.

Built by:

Elena, a field technician

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

Excel macros, exposed over HTTP

Database:

a Kubernetes PersistentVolume nobody wants to delete

Authentication:

the certificate is self-signed and everybody clicked through

Deployment:

deployed on Monday immediately before a public holiday

Responsible:

an intern whose contract ended in April

Documentation:

a PowerPoint from 2021 labelled FINAL

Security situation:

the service account is also a real employee

Future disaster:

It will fail five minutes before a board meeting.

Age: 6.6 years · originally expected to last 4 weeks · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 525 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 253 users, 78% chance of becoming business critical, alive 81x longer than intended.