Customer Support built an app only Kevin knows exists

“Supabase probably handles that.”— HR Generalist

Reason:

Allegedly because the CEO tested it on an iPad. Quietly rolled out to five countries.

Built by:

Katrin, an analyst

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

a Rails app from 2016 nobody updated

Database:

a private Slack channel called #data-backup

Authentication:

permissions are managed by copying another user's account

Deployment:

running on port 3000 in production

Responsible:

a project group that technically no longer exists

Documentation:

none, but the variable names are "pretty clear"

Security situation:

the temporary firewall rule is 4 months old

Future disaster:

It will round money differently from Finance.

Age: 5.5 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 6 owners so far · survived 2 reorganisations · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 846 users, alive 33x longer than intended, older than the department using it.