My interest was piqued as these cards have an interesting side effect: Miles do not expire anymore, provided you use one of the credit cards at least once a month. But is it really worth switching credit cards? The starter offer , called “classic” costs 120CHF annually. The next tier cards are Classic Plus at 180CHF, Gold at 300CHF and Platinum at 700CHF annually. With Classic Plus and Gold, you receive a flight voucher for the full annual membership – so your upfront cost is zero, provided you can use the voucher. With the Platinum card, you receive a voucher for 300CHF.

Cost and benefit:

Let’s approach this mathematically. First, we need to figure out some of the things that aren’t so clearly stated on the web site. While we know what the offer costs (120CHF/year or more), and how many miles you get (up to 1.25 miles/2CHF spent with the “classic” offer, up to 1.5/2 CHF, and up to 1 mile/CHF for Platinum), we don’t really know how much a mile is really worth. So, how much is a mile worth?

As it turns out, not all that much: €0.0073 on average, according to a Lufthansa publication from 2008 [source], that’s just about 1 Swiss centime. For the Swiss branch, I could not find comparable information, but took two samples instead: For goods on promotion in the Swiss Airlines store, I arrived at 0.0079CHF/mile. Looking at award air travel, I came to 0.0105CHF/miles (details). Sounds about right, so let’s take this last figure.

So, the math is simple. There are two things we need to compare: The cost of having these cards, and the benefit we’re receiving from them. If benefit minus cost is positive, we’re good. If not, we’re wasting good money.

That means: At the very minimum, you have to spend 16700.00 CHF annually just to break even with the Classic offer. Upper tier cards look a little better, as the ValuePack allows you to reclaim the annual fee in flight vouchers from Swiss.

If you’re flying with Swiss on your personal account, the flight voucher option might make things interesting, at least for the classic plus and gold offers. Not so much for the Platinum card, but then, if you have a platinum card, you probably couldn’t care less.

Here’s a graph of what your bonus will be, given your annual spending and assuming none of it is in foreign currencies:

Variable costs: In reality, things are more complicated! Miles and More credit cards charge a (rather steep) 2.5% service fee for all purchases effected in a currency other than CHF. This variable cost depends on the ratio (r) of foreign purchases contained in v, charged with a service charge (f) of 2.5%. If you’re like me, that ratio is rather high, as you use your credit card mostly abroad and other means of payment at home.

As the 2.5% service fee rapidly eat up your <1% bonus, you have to be careful not to purchase too much in foreign currencies. The limits are as follows:

The amount of foreign purchases allowed depends on your annual volume, but in a non-intuitive way: For the ClassicPlus and Gold cards, the relation is opposite from the Classic and Platinum cards, as the latter always have an annual fee.

Summary: Now, what should I do?

What I am NOT considering in this analysis are soft factors, such as the good feeling holding a platinum card, or the various hard-to-quantify benefits provided by the cards, such as the non-expiry of miles. The ValuePack also offers 5 stays in Swiss Airways lounges at a reduced price, but in my opinion, there are good alternatives to that. I have limited myself here to those benefits that are readily convertible into money.

All things considered, neither the Classic nor the Platinum cards look particularly attractive, as they have fixed, non-redeemable annual costs. The platinum card does accrue bonus miles faster, but that only gets interesting at annual volumes above 140000CHF, so this is definitely for persons with a larger purchase portfolio.

The recipe to make the most of your card then is to take the Gold set, pay as much as they let you with it in Switzerland, but spend the least possible amount in foreign currency. Finally, use the CHF300 voucher for a flight, or else you’re endangering your profits.

What did I learn from this myself? On average, my credit card bills have 51% of foreign currency purchases. With this ratio, none of the M&M cards is attractive for me. I will stick for the time being with my PostFinance MasterCard, which offers 0.5% bonus on all purchases, but only charges 0.9% on foreign currency transactions. On the other hand, I’ll have to be careful to not let my miles expire.

Talk back to me, I am interested in your opinion!

Appendix: Methods

Estimation of value of M&M miles:

Swiss Airlines promo on goods acquired with Miles: 1 mile = 0.0079 CHF. Currently, the Swiss Airlines online shop sells a Deuter backpack for 20′000 miles. The shop states the price of this backpack at CHF 179.-. That’s a little blown up, a price search shows this backpack to have a mean street price of CHF 158.70. Ergo: 1 mile = 0.0079 CHF

Award flight with Swiss: 1 mile = 0.0105CHF. Basis: Flight BSL<>LAX in Y costs 1259CHF excluding taxes and service fees (as priced by Swiss Airlines). The same flight could be obtained as an award using 2 * 60000 miles.

Calculation of break-even point without foreign currency purchases:

The variable we’re observing is the annual total volume of purchases (v).

Benefits: You receive an annual bonus (b) of e.g. 1000 miles for the classic option. You also make 1.25miles/2CHF spent (let’s call this fraction i for “toMiles”). We need to compare money with money, however, that’s where the factor o (for toMoney) comes in.

benefits = o (iv + b)

Fixed costs: The annual fee (c) is a fixed cost. There are variable costs, we come to that in a minute.

cost = c

Now, we can find out how much money we need to spend to break even:

o(iv + b) = c

or: v = c – ob / oi

Model including variable costs:

o (iv + b) = fpv + c

where f: service fee on foreign currency, p: ratio of foreign currency purchases

Maximal allowed ratio of foreign currency:

p = (oi +  (ob – c) / v ) / f

There was recently not so long ago a discussion at InfoQ, triggered by an opinion piece by Amr Elssamadisy. Michael Hedgpeth suggests that the bad reputation Scrum attributes to “classical” management may backfire in corporate cultures run by people who believe in traditional management. This made me wonder about the management culture and styles that we can observe in academia.

In brief, the argument goes that developers like Scrum, because notions like “chickens and pigs” put the pointy-haired bosses in their place, and give all the power to the team, but that it is this rebellious notion that makes Scrum unpopular with management.

In university, I have observed the complete opposite: It’s not the managers who are uncomfortable with Scrum, but rather the scientists and developers, who feel that their personal liberty is at stake — slightly causticly defined as: “I come in to the office in the morning, and do what I feel like, without feeling committed, and hopefully, great things will result”.

The management hierarchy in university research groups is rather flat, with a PI (principal investigator, group leader), usually a professor, on top and in charge of the project overall plan and finances, and a group of post-doctoral fellows, grad students and undergrads, as well as technicians or programmers, working on subprojects within the overall plan of things.

Apart from this, there is no explicit hierarchy, at least in the majority of groups that I have seen. Still, there is of course implicit hierarchy, based on seniority and in the best cases, on experience and merit, after all, the university is the one place that should reward learning and experience.

As we started implementing Scrum in research groups, we wondered what the best way to distribute the Scrum roles is. The answer, of course, is “it depends on the circumstances”. Still, here’s my current best thinking on this item:

The first question is who owns the project, especially if you are avoiding solo scrum by running a sprint with many several subprojects, as  I described in a previous article. Is the individual scientist the Product Owner? After all, she’s the “single wringable neck”, the one person ultimately responsible for the work being done correctly and timely.

On the other hand, an individual scientist, in particular at the graduate student level, often lacks the seasoned view of the veteran and isn’t able to perceive what avenues are promising, lacking the experience of long years of trial by fire. Here, the group head can contribute his or her experience, and the big picture view of the research subject that results from having been there, done that, and written a couple of reviews about it, as well.

So, we decided that the PI, or group head, should be the product owner in a science scrum project. Not an autocratic PO, but rather someone who listens to valuable input from his constituency, the grad students and post-docs, who might lack the big picture view, but who offer valuable input “from the trenches” nevertheless. The group head must take their input seriously (which should be de rigeur in any scientific endeavor, it goes without saying) but is in charge of planning and keeping the product backlog up-to-date, regardless of whether you’re producing software or writing papers as the end result.

(No funny lead picture about restaurant complaints this time … but a comic. Thanks for staying until the end.)

This seemingly magical size of teams of between 5 and 9 members being able to interact well goes back to the channel capacity of human cognition, studied by George Miller in 1956 [Miller, G. A. (1956), Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. (1956)]. Incidently, and probably unrelated, we can also keep about 7 items (give or take a few) in our short term memory.  So, there are at least two good reasons to keep a scrum team within that range: you can interact well with them, and you’ll be able to remember their names when first introduced.

I’m working with a biology research group and introduced them to Scrum. They use it to organize themselves in projects  that are even less steady and predictable than working with a vagarious customer: Pushing the limits of scientific research. Agile practices work very well in this context: you’re dealing with a complex interconnected topic, and the regions where new discoveries are made are those where there are few tried recipes. To make Scrum work in this domain, it needs some adaptations, and I will talk about those here and in future entries.

Here’s the problem: In this research group (and I know many groups that are alike), the median team size for a project is one. One Ph.D. student wondering how she’ll ever finish up her thesis project, or one ambitious post-doc trying to show the boss that his ideas work after all and can be published in that highly-cited journal. Sometimes, there will be a technician or programmer helping part- or full-time, but by and large, science is a lonely pursuit, overseen only by the group leader.

One solution is a large set of Solo Scrums for each scientist, with the group leader in the PO role for each of them. This is actually quite close to the way academic projects are often run: More or less regular meetings with your supervisor, who will tell you what to do next, and what avenues to better stop pursuing (product backlog prioritization). An added benefit is the use of a sprint backlog, which will tell you what you should do to ensure a happy boss come next meeting. Plus: The notion of time-boxing will keep meetings in control and let you do more science instead.

I prefer another solution: Make them all join one larger scrum team. We found that their projects are separate, and to some extent have to be – a PhD is awarded for a unique contribution to science – but the research topics overlap a fair bit, as well as the methodology. This provides more than enough attachment points between the group members.  A trade-off is that it will be more difficult or even impossible to find a sprint goal that is valid for all members. On the positive side, though, you get a real, live, interacting team rather than the slightly schizophrenic solo scrum situation.

Talking about your project with your team mates gives you new ideas about your own problems and challenges your own beliefs on what works and what doesn’t. It brings the team together and creates a form of group conscience, even though the team doesn’t work on one single product. In the daily scrum meetings, the team begins to understand better what everybody is doing, and gentle ribbing as a form of peer control usually happens when we see that one of the team members hasn’t really worked on what he promised to do this sprint. These checks are not only beneficial for the group, but also for the individual, as a way to focus and organize your work towards a goal.

For the group leader, too, using Scrum is beneficial. The meeting overhead is reduced, and there are fixed times every two weeks, when the team presents in a concise form their latest results and plans what to look into next.

Using Scrum to manage research projects, rather than building software, we had to change some of the definitions to make the process work in this altered context. In the next post, I will talk more about how we adapted Scrum to work with science projects.

Slashdot had a post up about an essay by Matthew Paul Thomas. You can read it here.

Its point is that while the open source model of software development is able to achieve good code quality by opening up all sources & letting others fix and build on your previous work, the model breaks when it comes to software usability.

A programmer may want to scratch their own itch, and not care so much about presentation and interaction with the program, whereas someone experienced in usability design may lack the necessary coding skills to just take the source and “patch the user interaction”.

In academic software, this is only worse… here, scratching your own itch is the main motivation, and documentation, maintainability and usability more often than not are so way down on the list that they’ll be done “right after I’m through with graduation”, which is never.

Some of these points are also discussed in this article, which goes back to a rant from Eric S. Raymond himself.

My handwriting sucks. That’s why I use a keyboard whenever I need to make sure that what I write down is actually read/write. Still, I am very fond of good design, and of good typefaces.

The man in blue is wondering about the typeface designers themselves: “There’s great power in a typeface, but what’s always interested me more than the typeface is the designer behind it – why did they create the typeface? Where did their inspiration come from? How did they start?

Lately, I’ve been asking just one question, though. Something which has always intrigued me: these people that help us communicate … how do they themselves communicate? If we strip away the monitors, and the printing presses, and the typefaces … how would William Caslon have written on a post-it note?”

So, he wrote to a number of typeface designers and asked for a sample of their handwriting. Inspiring… and comforting: Some of them produce chicken scratches just like me.

Really. Your safety is our number one concern. Therefore, may we ask you for your own safety and that of your fellow travelers to only take one drink at a time? And for your own comfort to clean up your mess after use? And while you’re at it, please fill out this self check-in form, so that we don’t have to do it. For your own comfort, of course…

These kind of requests are everywhere today in the US. I really don’t mind if I’m asked for a little cooperation, or to make everybody’s job a little easier by just, well, behaving like any well-behaving person would do. No problem with that at all. But please – don’t try to make me believe that it’s for my safety to only use one toilet seat cover at a time, or to throw away empty paper cups. It’s not. Not for my safety, not for my comfort. It’s just common sense. Tell ‘em that next time, instead.

Anyhow, thanks to Remy the rat, I went to search for the recipe for the movie’s signature dish, and lo and behold: Google provided. So, I spent half of last Saturday shopping, cooking, tasting, and enjoying some really good food. I had to make some translations and clever adaptations to the recipe (I don’t think you can get either japanese eggplant or yellow squash around here). Combine the efforts with a good bottle of red wine Globus cleverly convinced me to buy (El Molino de Puelles) while I was actually buying a present for Grubi, and you have:

The Menu

Le crottin de chèvre chaud et ses poires caramelisées sur salade verte
(Grilled goat cheese on salad and honey-caramelized pears) [recipe]

Carré d’agneau mariné aux herbes provençales et Confit Byaldi
(Marinaded lamb rack with Ratatouille ratatouille) [recipes]

&&&

Glace vanille et cafés
(not very inspired, this dessert, I admit…)

The major trick here was to start off my Saturday with shopping at the market for the fresh veggies, and the directly prepare the Confit Byaldi. Once that is done, the way is clear for the lamb rack and finally the goat cheese. That way, you actually have very little to do during the “hot phase” when you should above all entertain your guests. Again, I wanted to take pictures of the dishes in the making, but again, I of course forgot. So, there are no illustrations unfortunately. But what is better than just letting you imagine the sight of these dishes and the aroma above all!

Jetzt weiss ich endlich auch, wie man “Orata” übersetzt, denn von diesem Fisch gab’s reichlich … Daurade royale, Goldbrasse, oder sogar gilthead seabreem, das geht mir mittlerweile fast so leicht über die Lippen, wie der wohlschmeckende Fisch selbst, nur in der anderen Richtung. Für Pedanten: Hier ist von  Sparus auratus die Rede. Und der hat im Moment Saison in Verona.

Ebenfalls Saison haben die Fehlübersetzungen. Dank Babelfisch und Konsorten ist mittlerweile überall alles übersetzt, leider meistens messerscharf an der Realität vorbei. Da wird das Dessert mit Ricotta zum ausgeglühten Dessert, und hilfreich heisst das dann auf Englisch auch noch annealed. Also Stahlherstellung, und nicht Süsspeisen.

Aber am schönsten war schlussendlich doch die Suppe mit “Fusskrebs”. Und ich schau auf die Karte und der Kellner läuft vorbei und macht ein touristentaugliches “Fantastico!” dazu… Na, dann doch lieber ‘nen gesunden Insalatone.

Hardcore geek with his laptop, a recent model, running Linux with the Gnome desktop.

Only one console window, maximized, to fill the whole screen  black background and light grey fonts, running vi and mc.

Some things are just timeless.