Logistics built a company-wide announcement tool

“It has a login screen.”— Anja, Logistics

Reason:

Officially because someone said "just add AI". With 51 users and 85 feature requests.

Built by:

Anja, the management assistant

Build time:

3 evenings

Built with:

plain HTML and 1,900 lines of jQuery

Database:

an Oracle database that costs more than the application

Authentication:

Jens knows the password

Deployment:

behind a domain that still contains the word test

Responsible:

Finance, apparently

Documentation:

tribal knowledge, technically

Security situation:

the privacy policy refers to a different application

Future disaster:

It will cause HR Generalist to request an immediate status meeting.

Age: 5.9 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 4 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 324 users, alive 308x longer than intended, €129k per year.