For more than 40 years, Jim Schiel has shaped how organizations build software—and he's now at the leading edge of the shift redefining the field: the convergence of Agile and AI. His career has circled one question throughout, and AI has only sharpened it: how do organizations create teams that consistently perform at their best? A Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) since 2005, Jim has trained more than 24,000 professionals worldwide, helping leaders and teams put Agile principles to work in ways that produce real business results rather than process theater. His path began as a software developer in the mid-1980s. Between 2003 and 2008, he led one of the most ambitious Agile transformations of its era—guiding a 1,500-developer organization away from rigid waterfall delivery and into Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) at a scale few had attempted. In 2009, Jim founded Artisan Agility to help organizations meet 21st-century challenges through Agile coaching, leadership development, and consulting—work that has taken him inside Fortune 500 enterprises, early-stage startups, and government agencies across the globe. At the heart of that work is a distinct view of leadership: high-performing teams aren't managed into existence—they're cultivated. In his upcoming book, The 5X Effect, Jim lays out a framework for routinely building genuinely self-managed teams, shifting leaders away from directing the work and toward creating the conditions where exceptional work becomes the natural outcome. It's a philosophy that reframes the leader's job around capability, trust, and accountability rather than control. Today, Jim's central conviction is that AI is rewriting the economics of software development. When code is no longer an organization's most expensive asset, the durable advantage shifts to clear intent, sound judgment, and teams built to learn fast—exactly the strengths Agile was designed to cultivate. The organizations that win won't be the ones that bolt AI onto old delivery models; they'll be the ones that pair human judgment with AI-assisted development to lift both throughput and quality. Sierra Agility, which Jim launched in 2024, is where that conviction takes concrete form. An AI-powered Scrum platform with a built-in coaching engine, Sierra is designed to make Agile teams measurably more effective—surfacing the next best action, strengthening adoption, and meeting teams in the actual flow of their work rather than in a layer of administrative overhead. It reflects Jim's bet on where the discipline is going: Agile without the theater, amplified by AI. What hasn't changed is the throughline of his career: a relentless commitment to continuous improvement, leadership excellence, and team empowerment. Connect with Jim (jim@artisanagility.com) to explore how 21st-century leadership and AI-amplified business agility can transform your organization's performance.