Customer‐vendor co‐operation

Illustrates a case story detailing the customer‐vendor co‐operation in a project concerning the beta test of hardware and software at a radiology department. A qualitative analysis of the project has unveiled that contextual conditions like the nature of the technology, the organizational structure at both the customer and the vendor side, the development strategy, and the project organization were very important forces during the project. Technologically, the project was more complex than usually was seen at the hospital because it concerned both biomedical and administrative aspects. Conflicting interests in particular on the part of the customer side as well as between the customer and the vendor affected the course of the project. Methodologically, the project lacked a proper strategy for the co‐operative process. There was no formalized project organization which otherwise could have provided different conditions for the project.