The Founder's Office built a screenshot-to-Excel workflow

“We just need it until SAP is updated.”— Elena, The Founder's Office

Reason:

Because Finance has a different spreadsheet. Copied to production via floppy disks.

Built by:

Elena, a working student

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

a no-code builder on someone's personal account

Database:

an FTP server nobody knows the password for

Authentication:

the read-only account can update records

Deployment:

running on a server last patched 623 days ago

Responsible:

"digital transformation"

Documentation:

a README last updated 34 days ago

Security situation:

the database is reachable from the public internet

Future disaster:

It will email customer data to a market you do not operate in.

Age: 6.1 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 3 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 823 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 37x longer than intended, older than the department using it, €19k per year.