One week before the North American businesses were to change hands, the site went live. It was a complete disaster with customers and sales staff alike. Within 48 hours, our soon-to-be-new CEO found his way back to the original Web team -- which, by this time, was mainly me -- asking whether we could roll back to the original LAMP platform.

I think they ended up spending close to US$6 million on the "upgrade" -- a complete write-off that was buried in the sale of the U.S. companies. Soon afterward, I moved on, but I still take a peculiar pride in the fact that nine years after its humble birth, that original LAMP site is still online, managing close to $200 million annually in e-commerce sales, I'm told.

Even so, I wouldn't want to be the project manager who takes on the company's next Web platform replacement.