Data Protection built a promotion nomination portal

“The quarter ends Friday.”— HR Generalist

Reason:

Honestly? Because the admin account belongs to somebody who left 5 months ago. With 769 users and zero documentation.

Built by:

Miriam, the management assistant

Build time:

2 hours 22 minutes

Built with:

an AI agent with production credentials

Database:

a Google Sheet with an Apps Script nobody remembers writing

Authentication:

the MFA code is always 000000 in the test environment

Deployment:

in a Docker container nobody can rebuild

Responsible:

Bastian, who inherited it during a reorganisation

Documentation:

a Loom video whose owner account has been deleted

Security situation:

the penetration test account had global admin

Future disaster:

It will cause Legal to ask "who approved this?".

Age: 5.9 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 3 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 155 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 357 users, alive 102x longer than intended, 3 departments depend on it.