The Management Assistant built a 'temporary' inventory system

“We only need it until the migration.”— HR Generalist

Reason:

Allegedly because the licence costs €49 plus a support contract. Started as Suppliers_FIXED.xlsx with a script attached.

Built by:

Petra, a key account manager

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

WordPress with eleven plugins

Database:

a production table where the primary key is the customer's name

Authentication:

nobody knows the password, but the browser still does

Deployment:

hosted on Daniel's personal Vercel account

Responsible:

Bastian, who inherited it from Petra by accident

Documentation:

a Notion page titled "New docs"

Security situation:

the refresh token never expires

Future disaster:

It will get rewritten, producing exactly the same system.

Age: 8.5 years · originally expected to last 4 weeks · 5 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 56 days ago

Rated legendary mostly because: 5 accidental connections, 5 departments depend on it, alive 104x longer than intended.