Health & Safety built a project status dashboard

“It only has admin access because read-only didn't work.”— Regional Sales Lead

Reason:

Allegedly because the optional field breaks everything if left empty. With a settings page that does nothing.

Built by:

Tobias, a warehouse supervisor

Build time:

8 evenings

Built with:

a webhook pointed at someone's ngrok tunnel

Database:

a vector database because somebody said RAG

Authentication:

permissions are managed by copying another user's account

Deployment:

running from a zip file called Headcount_final.xlsx

Responsible:

Head of Operations, who delegated it to somebody who left

Documentation:

a Word document with tracked changes still enabled

Security situation:

the firewall rule is labelled TEMP

Future disaster:

It will stop working after someone renames a column.

Age: 6.3 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 2 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 420 days ago · original builder left 979 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €67k per year, alive 38x longer than intended, the builder has left.