CLIFFORD ODENDAAL
TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP | AGILE COACH | TECHNICAL PRODUCT MANAGER
USA +12104159988 • cliffordodendaal@gmail.com
PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Certified Product Manager/Owner & Technical Leader with 17+ years leading enterprise-scale products and agile delivery across financial services, SaaS, and infrastructure platforms. Translates strategy into roadmaps, prioritizes outcomes via OKRs, and coaches cross-functional teams to increase velocity, de-risk releases, and scale adoption. Deep fluency in SAFe, backlog management, user story writing, DevOps integration, cloud messaging (M365/Azure AD), and product analytics—consistently delivering measurable improvements in time-to-value, reliability, and stakeholder satisfaction.
TECHNICAL SKILLS
Agile/Product: Scrum, SAFe, Kanban,
PI Planning, OKRs, WSJF, Roadmaps, Backlog Management, Discovery, Feature Flags, Experimentation
Tools: Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, Rally, Aha!, Miro, ServiceNow, Power BI, Splunk, Git/GitHub
Cloud/Platform: Azure AD, Microsoft
365/Exchange (Online/Hybrid), VMware
vSphere, Windows Server, DNS/DHCP, Load Balancing
DevOps/Quality: CI/CD, Trunk-Based Dev, Automated Testing,
Release Orchestration, Observability, SLIs/SLOs, Error Budgets
Web/App/Data: React, Node.js, REST APIs, PostgreSQL, API Gateways, Python/PowerShell (automation)
Security/Compliance: Access Governance, RBAC,
Secrets Management, Data Retention, SOX/SOC
2 Evidence, Audit Readiness
Analytics/UX: Product Analytics, Journey/Funnel Analysis, A/B Testing, Cohorts, NPS/VoC, UAT
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
SellSaffa — Technical Senior
Product Owner
May 2025 – Sept 2025 | (SaaS delivery platform; startup initiative)
· Owns product vision and multi-quarter roadmap for a multi-tenant, mobile-first delivery platform serving 750+ active users in underserved geographies; aligns discovery insights to OKRs and executive priorities.
· Authors and curates a backlog of 75+ epics/stories with clear acceptance criteria and definition of done; maintains prioritization via WSJF to maximize business value and engineering flow.
· Facilitates all Scrum ceremonies across design/FE/BE/AI/data, sustaining 95% velocity predictability
and 100% sprint goal attainment across consecutive increments.
· Guides architecture choices for React + Node.js + PostgreSQL with Azure AD for authN/authZ; ensures
99.8% uptime, SLOs,
and resilient failure
handling with idempotent APIs.
·
Product-manages AI-assisted pricing
(GPT-4o + rules engine) to reach 95% accuracy
on cart recognition;
integrates feature flags and experiment playbooks to ship safely and
learn quickly.
·
Implements product analytics
and funnel KPIs (activation, conversion, retention, error budgets); instrumented dashboards expose real-time engagement and stability trends
to stakeholders.
·
Establishes release governance with automated CI/CD, trunk-based development, and progressive
delivery; reduces mean time between releases and rollback risk.
·
Leads UAT and
accessibility reviews across
iOS/Android/Web, tightening feedback loops with structured beta cohorts, in-app surveys, and support telemetry.
·
Creates a measurable Voice of Customer program (interviews, surveys, ticket taxonomy) feeding prioritization and continuous discovery rituals with
design partners.
BUILDSTR (INDEPENDENT
CONSULTANT) — Technology Solutions Consultant Mar 2025
– Sept 2025 | Enterprise messaging/infrastructure
transformation
·
Orchestrates productization of
a hybrid Exchange Online migration,
converting technical milestones into user-centered
epics focused on adoption, resilience, and change readiness.
·
Introduces a Scrum framework with
2-week sprints, story point estimation, capacity
planning, and
rolling-wave release
plans; attains 90% story completion consistency.
·
Creates a risk-based backlog for
coexistence, identity synchronization, and data protection; clarifies
non-functional requirements (RTO/RPO, latency, SLOs).
·
Normalizes definition of ready/done, acceptance criteria, and quality gates (unit/integration tests, peer reviews); lifts overall code quality and predictability.
·
Implements operational readiness
(runbooks, incident paths, on-call rotations,
SLIs/SLOs) to reduce
time-to-mitigate and improve
stakeholder confidence.
·
Aligns program to compliance and security controls (access
governance, audit trails, data retention), documenting control evidence for
audit.
·
Designs dashboards (Jira
+ Power BI) exposing burn-down, throughput, flow efficiency, and ageing WIP,
enabling data-informed trade-offs.
·
Coaches product/engineering
leaders on backlog hygiene, value slicing, and tech-debt accounting; realizes a 25% technical-debt reduction trendline.
·
Establishes change management and enablement (training, FAQs, comms cadences) to lift adoption
and reduce support tickets post-cutover.
USAA — Product
Owner, Infrastructure &
Digital Innovation Sept 2016
– Feb 2025 | Fortune 100 Financial Services
·
Product Owner for an enterprise messaging platform (75,000+
users) spanning 12 business units;
connects product vision to portfolio
OKRs and regulatory expectations.
·
Maintains a 200+ item backlog
balancing security, UX, and operational efficiency; applies WSJF/Cost of Delay and guardrails to protect roadmap integrity.
·
Leads SAFe adoption across multiple trains/teams; improves delivery speed 40% by standardizing cadence, PI planning
readiness, and dependency visualization.
·
Drives hybrid modernization: Azure AD, Office 365, and coexistence with on-prem Exchange; 95%+ user
adoption with staged rollouts, playbooks, and migration tooling.
·
Partners with platform engineering to embed CI/CD, automated
testing, and release orchestration; increases deployment
frequency 3× with lower change
failure rate.
·
Implements observability (Splunk/Power BI dashboards, synthetic checks) and SLOs/error budgets; cuts post-release
incidents 35% while increasing
service transparency.
·
Establishes metrics stack (velocity, cycle time,
WIP limits, escaped defects) and executive scorecards; enables data-driven planning and budget
negotiation.
·
Coordinates risk
& compliance (SOX, SOC 2, data retention, access governance); integrates evidence
capture into delivery workflows to reduce audit lift.
·
Elevates product culture with discovery/experimentation, value slicing, and ops-product collaboration,
improving stakeholder NPS and engineering flow.
GDC TECHNICS — Infrastructure Manager May 2014 – Aug 2016 | Aviation
Technology
·
Leads Agile adoption for
infrastructure programs (dual DC builds,
VMware virtualization, Exchange 2013), improving delivery 60% via cadence, visibility, and WIP
control.
·
Aligns roadmaps to availability, capacity,
and security objectives; introduces risk registers and dependency maps to stabilize
releases.
·
Implements
automation (PowerShell/IaC patterns)
for provisioning, configuration, and validation; trims repetitive
manual tasks 40%.
·
Establishes service readiness (runbooks, CMDB
hygiene, monitoring baselines) to reduce MTTR and handoff friction.
·
Standardizes backlog refinement and acceptance criteria
for infra stories
(performance, resilience, operability).
·
Builds release checklists with change windows, rollback criteria, and
guardrail alerts; sustains zero- disruption
migrations.
·
Improves
stakeholder visibility with burn-up, cumulative flow, and risk burndown reports; fosters trust and faster decisions.
·
Coaches leads on capacity planning
and resource leveling to
prevent burnout and protect critical
path.
·
Partners with security to close
vulnerability backlogs and enforce least-privilege and separation of duties.
SPUR CORPORATION — Strategic Innovation Consultant Apr 2012 – Mar 2014 |
Global Restaurant Chain
·
Introduces Scrum for international
infra deployments; institutionalizes backlog → sprint
→ release
flow for predictable delivery.
·
Directs Exchange 2010 rollout with staged cutovers and comms kits; maintains 100% on-time delivery
with no material business
impact.
·
Scales automation via PowerShell for
tenant provisioning, policy
enforcement, and compliance checks; reduces manual ops 80%.
·
Creates global runbooks, SOPs, and service maps to align
regional teams on common support
practices and SLAs.
·
Establishes feedback loops (surveys, support
taxonomies) to surface adoption blockers and prioritize fixes.
·
Implements health, capacity, and performance monitors; codifies threshold-to-action policies to
reduce toil.
·
Partners with finance/ops on TCO models and cost transparency to inform sequencing and retire waste.
·
Drives knowledge transfer
and enablement, lowering
escalations and stabilizing post-launch operations.
CERTIFICATIONS
Certified SAFe 4 PractitionerCertified SAFe 4 Practitioner
SAFe by Scaled Agile, Inc.SAFe by
Scaled Agile, Inc.Credential ID 37276920-3765Credential ID 37276920-3765
Certified SAFe 5 Product Owner/Product ManagerCertified SAFe 5 Product
Owner/Product Manager
SAFe by Scaled Agile, Inc.SAFe by
Scaled Agile, Inc.Credential ID 97944970-2597Credential ID 97944970-2597
Certified SAFe 5 Release Train EngineerCertified SAFe 5 Release Train
Engineer
SAFe by Scaled Agile, Inc.SAFe by
Scaled Agile, Inc.Credential ID 52776763-1728Credential ID 52776763-1728
Certified SAFe 5 Scrum MasterCertified SAFe 5 Scrum Master
SAFe by Scaled Agile, Inc.SAFe by
Scaled Agile, Inc.Credential ID 15623045-7557Credential ID 15623045-7557
Certified ScrumMaster (Scrum Alliance)Certified ScrumMaster (Scrum
Alliance)
Scrum AllianceScrum
AllianceCredential ID 001090307Credential ID 001090307
ICAgile Certified Professional (ICP)ICAgile Certified Professional (ICP)
ICAgileICAgileCredential ID
17-24771-17547819-ff5e-4438-9e37-2462146b5886Credential ID
17-24771-17547819-ff5e-4438-9e37-2462146b5886
ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC)ICAgile
Certified Professional – Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC)
ICAgileICAgileCredential ID
17-24902-17547819-ff5e-4438-9e37-2462146b5886Credential ID
17-24902-17547819-ff5e-4438-9e37-2462146b5886
ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Project Management
(ICP-APM)ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Project Management (ICP-APM)
ICAgileICAgileCredential ID
17-28406-17547819-ff5e-4438-9e37-2462146b5886Credential ID
17-28406-17547819-ff5e-4438-9e37-2462146b5886
Scaled OKRs Certified CoachScaled OKRs Certified Coach
Scaled OKRs by Hyperdrive
lets connect
cliffordodendaal@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/clifford-o