Trainer
Alan Atlas
CST, CSC, Agile Coach
Alan Atlas has been professionally involved in high tech for nearly thirty years. Starting out with a BA in Psychology from Brown University and a BSEE from the University of Massachusetts, he joined Bell Laboratories as a hardware engineer and promptly went off to Georgia Institute of Technology to get an MSEE. During his time at Bell Labs, he discovered software and taught himself the C programming language.
Alan then spent some years developing kernel functions in a realtime UNIX kernel for data acquisition workstations. Promoted to OS Group Manager, Alan began 25 years of technical management during which he contributed at all levels from Manager to CTO. Highlights of those years include the release of OSF Motif 1.0 and the release of AvidNews 1.0, an industry-award-winning broadcast news management system from Avid Technology, and time at RealNetworks.
While a Sr. Development Manager in Web Services at Amazon.com, Alan discovered Scrum. He became a Certified Scrum Master and he and his team used Scrum for over a year to successfully deliver Amazon S3, the Codie-award-winning web service that provides unlimited Internet-connected storage.
The success of the Amazon S3 project and Alan’s enthusiasm for the Scrum methodology led to widespread Scrum adoption within Amazon.com. Alan became a Certified Scrum Trainer and the first fulltime Agile Trainer/Coach at Amazon. His experiences in this capacity led him to seek and achieve the Certified Scrum Coach designation, and then to make a career switch into fulltime Agile coaching and training at Rally Software, a market leader in Agile tools and services. Alan has presented at Agile2009, the 2009 Munich Scrum Gathering, AgileChina2010, and Scrum Gatherings in Shanghai in 2011 and 2012. He has given certification courses in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Most recently, as CTO of Scanbuy, Inc., the leading mobile bar code solutions company in the world, Alan built an Agile engineering organization using Scrum and Kanban. Now the owner of Mad Parrot Consulting, LLC, Alan is based in Seattle, Washington, USA.
Outside of work, Alan plays tenor and baritone saxophone in Motown-style soul or rock bands, scuba dives, and naps whenever possible.
