R&D built an expense approval workflow

“It's only one database.”— Priya, R&D

Reason:

Allegedly because the deletion process requires a ticket, a manager and 6 approvals. Renamed three times to avoid attention.

Built by:

Priya, an intern

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

a Rails app from 2016 nobody updated

Database:

RabbitMQ with 152 unacknowledged messages

Authentication:

the production token is in someone's shell history

Deployment:

deployed at 16:10 because "nobody will be using it then"

Responsible:

"the team", which is Priya

Documentation:

a calendar invite description from January

Security situation:

the data protection officer does not know it exists

Future disaster:

It will fail during the year-end close.

Age: 197 days · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 9x longer than intended, €8k per year, 1 users.