For leaders of established product organizations

Make your product team better at the work that matters.

Better decisions. More customer learning. Less coordination that goes nowhere. I help your product organization improve how it works and put AI to practical use in the work you already do.

I'm Dave Mathias. I've spent more than 15 years doing product work across industries. Over the past five years, I led product, design, and AI at Shipwell and product at Cargill's AI Hub.

Explore the Product Team Effectiveness Sprint Book an introductory conversation
Dave Mathias

Sound familiar?

Good people. Too much work getting in their way.

  • Product managers spend more time coordinating work than learning from customers.
  • Decisions take too long, or keep getting reopened without new evidence.
  • Teams follow different practices and work from different assumptions.
  • You are shipping, but cannot tell whether the outcomes that matter are improving.
  • AI experiments are multiplying without becoming repeatable team practices.
  • The reasoning behind important decisions disappears when people move on.

Product team effectiveness

Shipping more is only useful if the right things improve.

Effectiveness means making decisions with clearer evidence, learning from customers often enough to change direction, and giving product people time to exercise judgment.

It also means remembering why a decision was made, sharing assumptions across teams, and using AI where it improves the work. We start with the friction in your product operating model and choose what deserves attention.

Start here / Approximately two weeks

Product Team Effectiveness Sprint

A focused engagement for product leaders with a team already in place. We examine real decisions, customer learning, PM time, coordination, and current AI use to find where effectiveness is being lost.

You receive a Product Team Effectiveness Map and clear 90-day priorities. Where practical, we also put one immediate improvement to work, such as a Decision Receipt or an AI-assisted research workflow.

Use the map with your own team or continue with Dave. The Sprint stands on its own.

Explore the Product Team Effectiveness Sprint

A clear path, one step at a time

Diagnose. Improve. Sustain.

Start with a focused Sprint. Decide what comes next once the priorities are clear. There is no need to commit to a larger engagement up front.

  1. 01 / Diagnose

    Product Team Effectiveness Sprint

    Approximately two weeks

    Find where effectiveness is being lost. Leave with an Effectiveness Map and clear priorities.

    Explore the Sprint

  2. 02 / Improve

    Product Team Accelerator

    Approximately 90 days

    Dave joins your team’s real work, focusing on the two or three practices that deserve the most attention.

    See the Accelerator

  3. 03 / Sustain

    Product Leadership Advisor

    Ongoing support, as needed

    Keep an experienced product partner available for leadership questions, important decisions, and periodic reviews.

    Explore advisory support

Need someone to step into a leadership role? Select fractional and interim product leadership engagements are also available.

Practical AI for product teams

Give product people more time for judgment and customers.

We identify where AI can remove low-value work, improve access to information, and help teams retrieve the reasoning behind earlier decisions. An AI Workflow Map connects the current task, possible changes, review needs, and an owner.

I can build alongside your team: prototyping workflows, agents, or tools, testing them against real work, and helping people use what proves useful.

Leave the reasoning behind, not just the decisions.

A Decision Receipt captures a decision's context, assumptions, evidence, alternatives, and expected outcome, plus what would change it and when to revisit it.

Together, these receipts build Decision Memory: reasoning that future teams and AI systems can retrieve and understand. The value is being able to use the context later.

See what a Decision Receipt captures

Why work with Dave

An experienced product operator, working alongside your team.

Product and AI experience

I've spent 15 years doing product work, including leading product, design, and AI at Shipwell and product at Cargill's AI Hub.

Work on real work

We work through current decisions, discovery, prioritization, and workflows. Coaching and building happen where your team already needs to make progress.

Build capability that stays

Stronger judgment, usable workflows, and accessible reasoning should remain with your team after the engagement ends.

My experience spans Cargill, Shipwell, U.S. Bank, Mayo Clinic, Medtronic, Ecolab, and TigerRisk. I also teach at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and co-founded ProductCamp Twin Cities.

More about Dave's experience

Ideas behind the work

Decisions, memory, and practical AI.

All writing · The book and ProductCamp Conversations podcast · Speaking and workshops

Tell me what you're trying to fix.

Bring a real product-team problem. In a 25-minute conversation, we'll discuss what's getting in the way and whether there's a useful next step. If Beyond the Data isn't the right fit, I'll say so.

Book an introductory conversation