Tree swing cartoon

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A tree swing cartoon or tire swing cartoon is a humorous graphical metaphor that purports to explain communication pitfalls in the division of labor in the development of a product.[1][2] It depicts how different departments implement or describe a tire swing attached to a tree, in various impractical ways: for example, "as designed by engineering" shows the swing tied to the trunk and slack on the ground.[3] The punchline is that the customer actually wanted a tire swing, when all of the previous implementations show a plank seat.[3]

The origin of this cartoon appears to be from at least the late 1960s, and possibly earlier. The original date and author are unknown, as is the exact original form.[4][5][3] Many variants of it appeared later in several books on education, software engineering and management.[6]

The cartoon has also been used to illustrate the waterfall model of software development.[7]

References

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