A tree swing cartoon or tire swing cartoon is a humorous graphical

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

that purports to explain communication pitfalls in the

division of labor The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (Departmentalization, specialisation). Individuals, organisations, and nations are endowed with or acquire specialis ...

in the development of a product. It depicts how different departments implement or describe a

tire swing A swing is a seat or platform, suspended from chains, ropes, or bars, on which one or more people can swing back and forth for enjoyment or relaxation. Swings are a common piece of equipment at children's playgrounds and may also be found in yard ...

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. The punchline is that the customer actually wanted a

, when all of the previous implementations show a plank seat. 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. Many variants of it appeared later in several books on education, software engineering and management. The cartoon has also been used to illustrate the

waterfall model The waterfall model is a breakdown of developmental activities into linear sequential phases, meaning that each phase is passed down onto each other, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a speciali ...

of software development.

References

Individual printed cartoons Metaphors Production economics {{comics-stub