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Different expectations of the end result among stakeholders and project team members can be a huge problem in projects. There is even a famous cartoon about this: it is about the customer expecting a swing on a tree, and all the different interpretations of it by others.
You can visit ProjectCartoon.com to view this cartoon and create your own versions.
If your project is suffering from something similar, you can use this cartoon as an exercise to raise awareness and discuss the different expectations in a non-threatening way.
After explaining and laughing about this famous cartoon, create a list of the project stakeholders and ask the people in the room to pick one or two stakeholders and draw their interpretation of the project end result. Every participant should also draw his own version. “What does ‘done’ look like to you?”
Tape all the resulting drawings to a wall, and let the discussion begin.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dave Garrett and Len O'Neal, RedBow Software. RedBow Software said: What Does Your Swing Look Like? Aligning Expectations By Drawing. http://bit.ly/ayUJSv [...]
Hello Bas. Ah, the swing – it never gets old as a really straightforward way of making the point about project deliverables.
This is a really excellent suggestion and one that I will use in the future.
I was doing a client project recently where the client simple didn’t like to read documentation which made it tricky to close the scope! I would try this approach I think next time.
Thanks for sharing.