Jim Highsmith is a Cutter Consortium Fellow Emeritus. Jim 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 Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, now in its second edition, and Agile Software Development Ecosystems. His first book, Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems, won the prestigious Jolt Award. He is coeditor (with Cutter Senior Consultant Alistair Cockburn) of the Agile Software Development Series. Mr. Highsmith 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, he has written dozens of articles for major industry publications. He holds a BS in electrical engineering and an MS in management.