Gantt Chart

Correct Answer: Determine the cause of the overlap and reschedule the activities accordingly.

The best course of action when two critical activities in a Gantt chart are overlapping, is to 'Determine the cause of the overlap and reschedule the activities accordingly'. This is because understanding the cause of the problem would help the project manager prevent similar issues in the future, and taking action to resolve the problem ensures that the project remains on track. The answer 'Ignore the situation and hope it resolves itself' is not a good course of action. Hoping problems will resolve themselves without action is inefficient and risky management. 'Reassign resources to only one activity at a time' could potentially slow down the overall progress of the project as it may not optimally use the available resources. It is a reactive approach and does not address the root cause of the problem. 'Shorten the duration of one or both activities to avoid the overlap' could be another potential solution, but it is more of a last resort when other options of rescheduling or reallocation cannot work. This approach can lead to increased pressure on the teams and may affect the quality of the output.

Correct Answer: Call a team meeting and present the updated Gantt chart.

The best way to handle this situation, from a Project Management Professional standpoint, is to 'Call a team meeting and present the updated Gantt chart'. This is because the Gantt chart is a visual medium, and presenting the changes in a meeting allows for clarifications, and questions to be answered immediately, ensuring that the entire team understands the change and its implications. The second option, 'Send an email with a brief summary of the change', is not ideal because an email might not fully communicate the scope of the change and it may lead to misunderstandings. The third option, 'Do not communicate the changes', is blatantly wrong as transparency and effective communication are key elements of successful project management. The last option, 'Delegate the task of communicating the changes to a team member', is not ideal as the project manager needs to ensure that the information about the changes has been accurately and comprehensively conveyed, which might not be the case if the task is delegated.

Correct Answer: Leave the schedule as it is, task B is scheduled correctly since task A needs to finish before it starts.

Finish-to-start is a relationship in project management where the start of one task (in this case, task B) depends on the completion of another task (task A). Therefore, task B's starting date being the same as task A's completion date is correct because task A must finish before task B can start, hence the name 'finish-to-start'. Now, let's understand why others are incorrect: Second answer suggests that task B should start after task A's completion. However, there is no need for an extra gap as task B can start immediately after task A finishes. Third answer suggests to start task B at same time as task A but that is incorrect since Task B is dependent on the completion of task A. The last answer suggests ignoring the issue, but there is no issue here, so there is nothing to ignore. The tasks are scheduled correctly.