Thanks everybody for clarifying and decent approaches

I just go into depth to see how I go about eliminating answers. In essence this is a 30 second question max.

1. Eliminate C/D as throw-away answers.

Now deciding between two plausible answers. The PMP is great about adding little dependent clauses which often trip up candidates.

A. Pretty straightforward, no ambiguity.
B. Pretty straightforward also, except for the "reassigning work". How would you reassign work? What if week 9 only has 1 person? You have to make a lot of assumptions!

Just based on word-meaning, you should be able to find the least-worst answer (which is A) in 30 seconds.

In Histogram each bar represents a range along X-axis and the label of X-axis is fairly intuitive in talking about range of project weeks, IMO.
Further, it looks like it's a resource overloading issue (solution=resource leveling) than an issue that needs schedule -compression as its solution.
Little over 1 minute does not give us the luxury of deep thinking - At max you can think one or two level deep, that's it.

Reiterating - Option A is a certainty but option B is only a possibility.

Actually, I would question if this is really a histogram as a histogram groups numbers into ranges and doesn't duplicate the range. See here .

You are incorrect in thinking about this histogram as a single source. The question clearly reads, "You then created the following resource histogram for your staff.". This means that each week is utilization for the entire staff. Again, this is a great PMP-thinking question because you probably wouldn't really create graphs this way because it loses fidelity. But we can glean from the chart, that in weeks 8 and 9, when the utilization is 150% that that number represents the utilization of ALL those assigned to do work that week. This makes the graph a little bit fuzzy since it is not a count like a true histogram, its a percentage, which is based on some theoretical limit of what work could be accomplished in that week. Thus, we are trying to cram 50% more work in week 8 and 9 than is physical possible within a normal work-week.

As always, free questions, may not be vetted and peer reviewed that well and this one clearly could use some work. But it definitely shows how to approach these questions on the PMP exam. We don't pick the answer we would like it to be, we pick the best (or least-worst) of those questions remaining. Or as Sherlock Holmes says, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Wanted to just clear up your response slightly.

Hope this helps.

I thought this is a simple one. The graph is a Resource Histogram with X axis displaying the time frame when a particular resource will be available/work on the project and Y-axis the %ge that the resource will be working on the project.
This histogram only talks about one resource
The moment I saw this resource overloaded beyond 100%, of course the project/activity will not be finished in time.

Option A is a certainty but option B is only a possibility. Hence, option A is better than B. C&D of course can be easily ruled out.

Let me take a stab at it, I love these puzzle PMP exam questions. As always, let's see if we can eliminate two answers by carefully reviewing what data we are given. The graph is total effort for all staff members, if I'm reading that correctly. The answers given:

A - The project can probably not be finished as scheduled.
B - You may be able to finish the project early by reassigning work.
C - You should avoid network logic diagramming for scheduling.
D - You may run into problems with dual reporting relationships.

I would eliminate C and D as both of these seem to provide conclusions that we cannot infer from this graph, which only gives us staff utilization by week for the project. [C] sequencing cannot be deduced from a histogram and [D] is more team management and organizational theory, neither of which can be gleaned from the histogram. So now down to A & B and both seem plausible because we are drawing conclusions and inferences based on resource / staff utilization. The question then is do we think it can't be finished or that it could possibly be finished if we were to smooth or reassign activities.

The key to answering these questions is to deal with what you are faced with, not with some potential. What is proactive? What moves the project forward with the tools you have at your disposal? The tool in this case is our histogram and it's telling us (data analysis) that our staff is grossly over-utilized. Some of these weeks reach 150% utilization. Most weeks have the staff at or above 100%. (15 out of 20).

Now what about answer B? This is where most candidates fail the exam when encountering these situational questions. No one likes to admit something has gone wrong with the project because we feel that the PM will take the blame. We want to make it right. However, this is not dealing with the problem proactively. Given these gross staff over-utilization percentages, trying to reassign tasks is simply a backhanded way of not dealing with the problem proactively, it is a delaying-tactic. Avoid answers that have the PM being the (data) hero. The other problem with B is that we have to draw some pretty fuzzy conclusions about how we would reassign activities and since we don’t have a breakout by resource we have no way of knowing if reassignment would work. Let’s not live in a fantasy world. Staff is grossly over-utilized, we need to bring on more staff or add more time or re-estimate activities or find the root cause of our staff over-utilization.

Given this clear data, its is mostly likely that the project cannot be finished as scheduled (A). See how making this decision drives the project forward? We need more staff, more time. It's either look back at activities, get more resources or get more time. So we move forward with making that decision! Go! Go! Go!

Final answer (A).

So much fun!