R&D built a contract repository with no search

“We only need it until the migration.”— Group Controller

Reason:

Honestly? Because the architecture diagram contains a box labelled "magic". With 470 users and 32 feature requests.

Built by:

Petra, a team lead

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

a Rails app from 2016 nobody updated

Database:

an Oracle database nobody can explain the licensing for

Authentication:

the API key is called PUBLIC_API_KEY

Deployment:

deployed through a GitHub Action that only Anja understands

Responsible:

Sofia, because their credit card pays for it

Documentation:

a Word document with tracked changes still enabled

Security situation:

it stores passwords, hashed with nothing

Future disaster:

It will break the day Petra changes their password.

Age: 5.2 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 4 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 74 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 802 users, alive 273x longer than intended, €55k per year.