Product Operations Executive

SCOTT WALLIS

Fairview, Texas ***** 515-***-**** ********@******.*** linkedin.com/in/scott-a-wallis

PRODUCT OPERATIONS & PORTFOLIO STRATEGY LEADER ENTERPRISE TRANSFORMATION

Executive-level product operations and portfolio strategy leader with 18+ years designing the operating models regulated enterprises run on. Applies design thinking and systems thinking as an operating discipline — broad ideation, piloted validation, and optimizing the whole system over any single part. Most recently led product operations and portfolio governance across 3 enterprise products and 50+ teams at Wells Fargo. Certified Enterprise Agility Core Strategist (2025), with hands-on training in Strategic AI (Hanna Prodigy).

Career note: Full-time family commitment, August 2025 – 2026, during which earned the Certified Enterprise Agility Core Strategist credential; now fully available for immediate engagement.

CORE COMPETENCIES

Design Thinking (Ideate Pilot Scale) Systems Thinking & Whole-System Optimization Product Operations Product Operating Model

Portfolio Strategy & Governance Value Stream Management Flow Metrics OKRs & Outcome-Based Roadmaps

AI-Enabled Transformation (Strategic AI / Hanna Prodigy) SAFe / LeSS / Kanban Risk Mitigation & Regulatory Compliance PI Planning at Scale

Executive & Team Leadership Development Change Governance Community of Practice Leadership Pega Platform Delivery

Jira Confluence ServiceNow Miro Mural

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

WELLS FARGO, San Antonio, TX December 2021 – July 2025

Executive Director Principal Product Manager, Portfolio Strategy & Operations

Led product operating model transformation across 3 high-visibility enterprise products and 50+ teams in a heavily regulated environment, applying systems thinking to replace product-by-product local optimization — separate planning cycles, separate teams, separate code — with a single, whole-portfolio operating model. Designed and implemented that custom operating model, adapted from the enterprise's broader transformation framework to fit regulated, multi-product delivery.

•Designed the enablement strategy across all 4 levels of the Customer Excellence operating model transformation — portfolio, product, feature, and story/engineering — aligning leadership, product management, architecture, and delivery around a common planning and execution model that accelerated delivery of high-impact features.

•Consolidated 3 siloed product organizations (Complaints, Remediation, and Redress) — with over 80% audience overlap — onto a shared Pega platform into one planning cadence, cutting PI Planning from 3 separate quarterly sessions to a single enterprise-wide event of 300+ participants completed in 2 days, reducing planning costs by 50%+.

•Replaced political, discretionary prioritization with a preplanning prioritization matrix combining regulatory, policy, and impact classification with technical sizing, reducing PI Planning duration by half a day while improving alignment across three competing product organizations.

•Conceived and championed a reusable framework of shared, pre-built code components adopted by 26 teams across all 3 products — eliminating redundant development and accelerating delivery through platform reuse.

•Made business and system architects the gatekeepers of new feature requests by moving them to the front of the intake process — rather than reviewing features only after they were written — eliminating rework and freeing architects to engage more teams instead of firefighting.

•Founded the Enterprise Customer Excellence Agile Community of Practice, growing monthly attendance to 200+ participants and scaling cross-enterprise problem-solving.

•Partnered with the Change Management team — the former group PMO — to align governance activities and develop OKRs and KPIs, keeping leadership focused on actual business need and reducing investment in low-value, fringe features.

WELLS FARGO, West Des Moines, IA January 2018 – November 2021

CTO Agile Coach Lead

Led a team of 9 enterprise coaches supporting hundreds of professionals across all Chief Technology Office products, where individual leaders previously owned their own roadmaps with no integration across teams or platforms. Designed the engagement model matching coach skillsets to customer needs and built a scaling model that improved consistency and mitigated delivery risk.

•Redesigned the coaching engagement model itself: when the original enterprise-wide model proved too long and cumbersome — evidenced by a growing backlog of teams waiting for engagement — introduced SIPOC process mapping to drive brainstorming with the coaching team, piloted a more abbreviated model, and scaled it once results confirmed it worked.

•Introduced flow metrics that surfaced hidden rework and inefficiency across products, and replaced quarterly rolling-wave waterfall planning with 2-week iterations — keeping business and technology continuously aligned and ensuring the product being built matched customers' actual needs.

•Led the full transition of quarterly planning from onsite to video conference during COVID, fully integrating India-based teams and improving attendance. Shortened event duration from 2.5 to 2 days, and surfaced problems earlier thanks to broader participation.

TELLIGEN, West Des Moines, IA November 2016 – December 2017

Project Management Lead

Provided strategic direction to a federal portfolio of 5 agile teams across 3 projects plus supporting staff and call-center teams. Converted client-facing teams from ad hoc operation to structured Kanban, shifting prioritization to client value — enabling faster iteration and earlier delivery of high-value work.

WELLS FARGO, West Des Moines, IA November 2015 – November 2016

Agile Project Manager (Contractor)

Engaged to sunset legacy home lending platforms — the third attempt at retiring one after two prior efforts failed — while building a next-generation platform for the National Escalation Team.

•Fully sunset one legacy platform and reduced the other by roughly a third of its dependent systems — succeeding where two prior attempts had not.

•Led the agile build of a new Pega platform for the National Escalation Team — a project that evolved from a planned lift-and-shift into a full rewrite. Though shelved before launch for a bank-wide security initiative, the codebase became the technical foundation for Wells Fargo's Claims and later Complaints platforms.

SHORT'S TRAVEL MANAGEMENT, Iowa March 2014 – November 2015

Project Management Director

Built an Agile PMO from the ground up in 6 months — all governance systems and processes for a 190+ person organization spanning 7 departments — and led a company-wide operating model transformation. Chaired the Project Steering Committee, aligning operational goals with strategy.

•Replaced years of backlog buildup and “loudest voice wins” prioritization with an objective process: had each of 7 departments submit their top 5 requests monthly, then sized and scored them for the team to work — clearing the entire backlog for 3 of 7 departments within 3 months.

•Modernized application lifecycle management with Lean Kanban, integrating QA, continuous integration, and deployment, reducing change-request backlog by 50% within five months.

INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR, Des Moines, IA June 2013 – March 2014

Implementation & Process Improvement Consultant

•Implementation Consultant, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (June–October 2013): Served as liaison between a US Treasury-affiliated vendor (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) and Wells Fargo lines of business, capturing and analyzing third-party policy updates and engaging PMs, BAs, and developers on implementation planning for complex, strategic initiatives.

•Project Management Consultant, Technical Solutions (October 2013–March 2014): Analyzed business process quality and performance, developed improvement recommendations, and created operational standards and training documentation, aligning SLAs to customer and business requirements.

ZYTRON ENTERPRISES LLC, Hurst, TX July 2007 – January 2012

Project Manager

Led disaster recovery program management and enterprise IT infrastructure projects for a business solutions firm specializing in disaster recovery and reconstruction consulting.

•Managed a $10MM FEMA disaster recovery program as a Tier One contractor for the Army Corps of Engineers Blue Roof program following Hurricane Ike — vendor management across 5 subcontractors totaling roughly 700 workers — while concurrently managing multiple IT infrastructure projects for enterprise customers using a blend of Agile and Waterfall techniques.

CERTIFICATIONS

Certified Enterprise Agility Core Strategist — Enterprise Agility University (2025) SAFe Program Consultant (SPC)

Project & Delivery Management: PMP PMI-ACP Lean Six Sigma Black Belt – Villanova

Agile Coaching & Scrum: ICP-ACC ICP-ATF KMP PSM I PSPO I LeSS Certified – Provisional

Professional Development: “Strategic Leadership for Economic Uncertainty” — Enterprise Agility University, incl. Strategic AI

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) — Palmer College, Davenport, IA

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