Sooner or later in your alliance, you will face a need to change the way you are working with your partner. Various reasons might cause that change. Sales might stall, product development might hit unexpected barriers, or drug development might not be feasible. I am sure that you can think of reasons that apply to your particular alliance.
Outside circumstances are reasons that can impact every alliance. Take the current Corona/Covid-19 virus developments. In response to it, companies limit non-essential business travel and people are forced to work from home. If you are used to frequent travel and working with your alliance partner in a face to face mode, these developments will require you to transform your way of working. Those are relatively mild transformations, but for some the future of their alliance might be in danger.
You can not influence the outside circumstances, but you can use the momentum of current uncertain times to improve your work for the future. Two suggestions:
Assess your way of working. Do you really need to meet in order to work together, or can you work closely together without the need for travel? I perform 90% of my alliance coaching work via Zoom video connections. How can you do your work online?
Assess the current state of your alliance. Perform an alliance health check to assess the state of your alliance. Use the outcomes to create a plan of action, either to improve or to exit the alliance.