Carl Erickson

Carl received his MS and PhD in computer engineering in 1991 from Michigan State University, and a BS in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1985. As a faculty member at Grand Valley State University from 1991 to 2000, he taught computer science courses in networking, operating systems, architecture, and object technology. He was principal investigator on two National Science Foundation grants for developing operating systems and architecture laboratories.

Looking for an opportunity to actually do what he’d been teaching, Carl took a position as vice-president of technology development for deltamode, a startup company based in Austin, Texas. A year later, when deltamode ran out of money, Carl formed Atomic Object with his partner and former student, Bill Bereza. Two key lessons came from deltamode: write software for the real needs of real people, and agile practices can change the software world. Atomic was born in the summer of 2001.

Carl maintains a part-time position as an industrial lecturer at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden. In recent years he’s taught a summer course called Software Craftsmanship.

Carl’s responsibilities at Atomic include sales, consulting, project management, customer relations, finances and dishwashing. Carl has consulted with Priority Health, X-Rite, ISD Corporation, MMPC, IBM, and other companies in the area of software process improvement. He’s a frequent speaker at west Michigan companies and venues.

Making up for a youthful deficit of organized sports, Carl is now actively working to keep up with his younger employees at softball, cyclo-cross, and innebandy. He’s served for six years on the board of the Swedish American Heritage Society, currently as its president.

Selected Publications:

“Big, complex, and tested? Just say ‘when’”, David Crosby, Carl Erickson, Better Software, February 2007.

“Presenter First: Organizing Complex GUI Applications for TDD,” Micah Alles, David Crosby, Carl Erickson, Brian Harleton, Michael Marsiglia, Greg Pattison, Curt Stienstra, Agile International Conference, Minneapolis, MN, July 2006.

“Effective Test Driven Development for Embedded Software,” Michael J. Karlesky, William I. Bereza, Carl B. Erickson, IEEE Electro/Information Technology Conference, East Lansing, MI, May 2006.

“Make Haste, not Waste: Automated System Testing”, Carl Erickson, Ralph Palmer, David Crosby, Michael Marsiglia, Micah Alles, Extreme Programming and Agile Methods – XP Agile Universe , Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003

“Extending UNIX System Logging with SHARP”, Matt Bing, Carl Erickson, 14th Systems Administration Conference (LISA 2000), USENIX, New Orleans, LA, December 2000.

“Object Oriented Integration Testing”, Paul Jorgensen, Carl Erickson, Communications of the ACM, Volume 37, Number 9, September 1994.