The Future of Project Intelligence with Cherry

Project information rarely arrives in a form that makes the next decision obvious.

The schedule contains dates, dependencies, progress updates and comments. Someone still has to work through it, understand what matters and explain it to the people making decisions.

Usually, that someone is the project manager. And they’ll probably be rebuilding a PowerPoint deck while they do it.

That’s the problem I’m building Cherry to address.

Start with the schedule you already have

Cherry’s starting point is a schedule export. You share the schedule you already maintain, and Cherry Pro analyses it to produce a structured view of delivery.

There’s no need to move your team into another project management system or build a reporting dashboard from scratch.

The aim is practical: make it easier to understand where delivery stands, what needs attention and which conversations need to happen next.

Give the information a useful shape

Cherry Pro brings schedule information into an interactive project board, with views covering the executive overview, delivery progress, schedule, risks, recommended actions, workstreams and critical path.

Those views serve different purposes. An executive needs to understand the delivery outlook and decisions required. A PM needs to investigate the detail behind a concern. A workstream lead needs to understand how their activities affect the wider plan.

A useful report helps each person find the information they need without losing the evidence behind it.

Show the reasoning

A risk flag needs an explanation.

What in the schedule raised the concern?

Which activities are affected?

Is there enough information to support the finding?

What should the PM investigate before escalating it?

Cherry’s approach is to make that reasoning visible, including uncertainty and conflicting information.

A schedule can contain outdated progress, missing dependencies or dates that contradict one another. Those limitations matter. A polished report should never give weak information more authority than it deserves.

Keep professional judgement in the conversation

A schedule won’t tell you everything.

It might show that an activity is late. It won’t necessarily explain the disagreement between two department heads, the resource commitment that never materialised or the decision a sponsor keeps avoiding.

PMs still need to investigate, challenge, negotiate and lead.

Cherry is intended to reduce the work involved in preparing and interpreting project information, giving those conversations a stronger starting point. The people responsible for delivery still have to decide what to do.

Turn insight into action

Cherry combines its analysis with experienced delivery support in two ways.

Cherry Concierge provides recurring reporting support, with project packs prepared and reviewed by me, alongside a regular conversation about findings and priorities.

Cherry Consulting provides defined engagements for a specific project, program or PMO challenge, such as reviewing project health, assessing recovery options or strengthening governance.

The purpose is to help people use the findings, ask better questions and move decisions forward.

Build towards better delivery conversations

My ambition for Cherry is straightforward: less time assembling reports, clearer evidence and more time acting on what matters.

That also requires organisations to be willing to hear uncomfortable information. A report can highlight a concern. Leadership determines whether people can raise it openly and whether anyone acts.

The future I want to build gives project professionals more time and better information to do the work that needs their judgement.

If reporting is taking too much of your week, or you need an independent view of a delivery challenge, get in touch at gill@cherrypi.io.

About the author

Gill Townsend is the founder of Cherry PI and a project delivery leader specialising in project governance, delivery leadership and PMO improvement. She writes about the realities of managing projects, challenging common assumptions and making project delivery more effective.