The Management Assistant built a product catalogue that disagrees with the product catalogue

“It's more of a prototype.”— Miriam, The Management Assistant

Reason:

Because the export button creates Budget2026_v2_final_FINAL.xlsm, but nobody knows where. With a settings page that does nothing.

Built by:

Miriam, the management assistant

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

a no-code builder on a personal account

Database:

a SOAP service returning XML from 8 years ago

Authentication:

the password policy requires one uppercase letter and optimism

Deployment:

running on an EC2 instance somebody resized manually

Responsible:

nobody officially, Anja emotionally

Documentation:

a file called README-NEW-FINAL.md

Security situation:

the database is reachable from the public internet

Future disaster:

It will trigger a call from the works council.

Age: 2.7 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 5 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 3 days ago · original builder left 515 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 48x longer than intended, nobody owns it, the builder has left.