R&D built a translation request tracker

“The AI understands the code.”— Jens, R&D

Reason:

Because the source of truth is an email attachment from August. With 2 users, one of whom is the CEO.

Built by:

Jens, a field technician

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

a Slack bot doing database writes

Database:

one table called data

Authentication:

the logout button refreshes the page

Deployment:

deployed straight to production on a Friday, no staging

Responsible:

Elena, who has not touched it in 13 months

Documentation:

a README last updated 209 days ago

Security situation:

no security review, no plans for one

Future disaster:

It will fail five minutes before a board meeting.

Age: 2.1 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 770 days ago · original builder left 204 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 565 users, 4 accidental connections, 22% chance of becoming business critical.