Jim Highsmith

Jim Highsmith is a Cutter Fellow Emeritus. He was the founding Director of Cutter’s Agile Product & Project Management practice and received the 2005 Stevens Award in recognition of his work in adaptive software development and Agile processes. Mr. Highsmith has 30-plus years’ experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, and software developer. He has consulted with IT and product development organizations and software companies in the US, Europe, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Japan, India, and New Zealand to help them adapt to the accelerated pace of development in increasingly complex, uncertain environments. His areas of consulting include Agile software development, project management, and collaboration. Mr. Highsmith is author of Wild West to Agile: Adventures in Software Development Evolution and Revolution, EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation, Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, and Agile Software Development Ecosystems. His first book, Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems, won the prestigious Jolt Award. Mr. Highsmith is coeditor (with Cutter Expert Alistair Cockburn) of the Agile Software Development Series. He is also coauthor of the Agile Manifesto, coauthor of the Declaration of Interdependence for project leaders, founding member of the Agile Alliance, and cofounder and first President of the Agile Project Leadership Network. A frequent speaker at conferences worldwide, Mr. Highsmith has written dozens of articles for major industry publications. He holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and a master of science degree in management. He can be reaches at experts@cutter.com.