Tree swing cartoon

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, and how different it is from what the customer actually intended.

It has also been used to illustrate the waterfall model of software development.

[3] The origin of this cartoon appears to be from at least the late 60's, and possibly earlier.

[4][5][6] Many variants of it appeared later in several books on education, software engineering and management.