Table 5 Timeline interview design

We asked after pivotal moments for the collaboration, good or bad, and let minor events emerge from elaboration on the major events. We were planning to be alert to elements of the process model by Ring & Van de Ven (1994) (negotiations of joint expectations through formal bargaining or informal sense making; commitments for future action through formal legal contracts or psychological contract; executions of commitments through role interactions or personal interactions) throughout the interview as they surfaced in the conversation. However, it turned out that asking after these elements (e.g. can you remember instances when expectations were made sense of?) was a good way for key moments to surface in the interview, as these elements were found to be particularly present in these key moments. After construction of the timeline, we reflected on the entire timeline by means of principles based on the metaphor of improvisational theatre. Different authors on improvisational theatre assert different ground principles. Based on the second author’s experience of being a performer of improvisation theatre himself and texts on improvisational theatre, we developed the set of principles shown in Table 6. Principles were written on post-its beforehand, and the interviewees were asked whether they felt that certain principles were applicable or not to certain events on the timeline. If so, they were invited to stick these principles next to the relevant occasion(s) and to explain why