oriented teams that usually consist of specialized professionals. While they are generally only required for short spans of time, unlike networked teams, they are not dissolved after completion of the tasks. The team may be either internal or external to the organization. Project development teams Similar to parallel teams, these teams are geographically distributed and may operate from different time zones. Project development teams are mainly focused on creating new products, information systems or organizational processes for users and/or customers. These teams exist longer than parallel teams and have the added ability to make decisions rather than just make recommendations. Similar to networked teams, project development teams may also add or remove members of their team at any given time, as needed for their area of expertise. Work, production or functional teams These teams are totally function specific where they only work on a particular area within an organization (i.e. finance, training, research, etc.). Operating virtually from different geographical locations, these teams exist to perform regular or ongoing tasks. Service teams Service teams are geographically located in different time-zones and are assigned to a particular service such as customer support, network upgrades, data maintenance, etc. Each team works on providing the particular service in their daylight hours and at the end of day, work is delegated to the next team which operates in a different time zone so that there is someone handling the service 24 hours a day. Offshore ISD teams Offshore ISD outsourcing teams are independent service provider teams that a company can subcontract portions of work to. These teams usually work in conjunction with an onshore team. Offshore ISD is commonly used for software development as well as international R&D projects. Global virtual teams Global Virtual Teams (GVT) are defined as “a group of workers, formally recognized by the organization as a team, with members from different countries who are collectively accountable for outputs across locations, and who utilize technology to some degree to accomplish their work”. These teams usually span multiple countries and excel at their ability to transfer best practices across sites, resulting in substantial improvements in operations. However, they may struggle with establishing effective communication which engenders trust and engages team members. Management According to Maznevksi and Chudoba (2000), the life circle of virtual team management includes five stages: 1. Preparations 2. Launch 3. Performance management 4. Team development 5. Disbanding Preparations The initial