BREAKING: Audit finds the 'database' was a spreadsheet shared by nine people
The file had four tabs, one protected by a password nobody knew, and an active filter hiding 12% of the rows — which, according to the company, 'explains a lot.'
- spreadsheet
- data
- processes
notice: This is satire. Names, companies and telemetry are invented. Any resemblance to your environment is your problem.
An internal audit closed this Tuesday concluded that the company's contract management system was a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was shared with nine people, had four tabs and no access policy.
"In our defense, we never officially called it a database," said the head of the area in a statement. "We called it 'the base.' The word database showed up later, in a presentation to the board, and from then on nobody walked it back."
According to the report, the file had features the auditors classified as "surprisingly robust for a format that does not support concurrency": a tab protected by a password that none of the nine users knew, an active filter hiding 12% of the rows since March, and a column called valor_ok whose filling rule was described in the report as "an oral tradition."
The technology team learned of the case when it was asked to build an integration with "the base." After three days of investigation, it was identified that the spreadsheet fed a monthly report, which fed a budget decision, which fed the hiring of a system to replace the spreadsheet.
The new system is scheduled to go live next quarter. Meanwhile, the spreadsheet remains in production, now with seventeen people editing it at the same time and a new tab called base_nova_nao_usar.
This is a work of satire. Characters, dates, and numbers are invented. If you recognized your environment, be grateful you were not named.