Quality Assurance built a secret Santa allocator

“The customer already saw the demo.”— Kevin, Quality Assurance

Reason:

Honestly? Because Finance has a different spreadsheet. With a logo generated at 17:58.

Built by:

Kevin, a product owner

Build time:

3 evenings

Built with:

ChatGPT, copy, paste, repeat

Database:

Trello cards with JSON in the descriptions

Authentication:

the VPN password is the Wi-Fi password

Deployment:

running from a zip file called Suppliers_v2.xlsx

Responsible:

Daniel, who inherited it during a reorganisation

Documentation:

a Miro board with 156 sticky notes

Security situation:

security is handled by being behind the office Wi-Fi

Future disaster:

It will turn out to be the only system that knows the real numbers.

Age: 3.7 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 420 days ago · original builder left 413 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 195x longer than intended, 33% chance of becoming business critical, the builder has left.