IT (yes, really) built a vendor onboarding portal

“The quarter ends Friday.”— Head of Operations

Reason:

Because the process requires signatures from 3 people. With 3 tests, all skipped.

Built by:

Anja, a product owner

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Python and a cron job on a laptop

Database:

a network drive mapped as Z: on three people's computers

Authentication:

the role is a query parameter

Deployment:

deployed to staging, which customers are now using

Responsible:

a former employee still helping occasionally

Documentation:

a folder called OLD_DO_NOT_USE containing the current documentation

Security situation:

it logs full customer records to the console

Future disaster:

It will break the day Anja changes their password.

Age: 21 days · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 21 days ago

Rated mythic mostly because: €6.5m per year, 888 users, 18% chance of becoming business critical.