Field Service built a shift planner that emails PDFs

“It's only employee data.”— Head of Operations

Reason:

Because the vendor quoted 5 months and an alignment workshop. Renamed twice to avoid attention.

Built by:

Olivier, a key account manager

Build time:

8 evenings

Built with:

Power Apps, licensed to one employee

Database:

a YAML file with 124,298 customer records

Authentication:

MFA exists, but everyone clicked "remember this device forever"

Deployment:

deployed into production because staging was broken

Responsible:

an intern whose contract ended in December

Documentation:

a file called README-NEW-FINAL.md

Security situation:

the user's role is stored in localStorage

Future disaster:

It will cause Security to ask "what application?".

Age: 274 days · originally expected to last 2 months · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 210 days ago · original builder left 140 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 79% chance of becoming business critical, €310k per year, 2 accidental connections.