An Investigation of Project Management Technologies Enabling Inclusion of Isolated Team Members

Abstract At the beginning of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic started unexpectedly for everyone. Lots of employees around the world were forced to temporarily switch to remote work format. At this moment, many companies are faced with a serious problem: ensuring the continuity of the functioning of their business processes in the current conditions. Every company strived to develop a solution to the problem in its own wayt. However, no "one-size-fits-all" approach has yet been developed to maintain the interruptive completion of the project team's tasks. This means that this lacuna can be closed by conducting research on how to create conditions for remote workers to support their contribution to the work on the projects which they are involved in. The purpose of this work is to create a set of measures for the most complete solution to the problem of ensuring the continuity of the functioning of project teams, which participants were transited to the remote mode of work. To achieve the goal of the work, the following tasks were set: 1. To study the main problems faced by managers and employees who are transferred to the remote mode of work. 2. Identify solutions to the problems by conducting a multiple case study of the experience of Russian companies that switched to remote operation in the very short time. 3. Perform validation of the received set during the discussion with the expert. 4. Apply the approved set of measures to the remote controlling model in the company where the pre-graduate practice took place. The result of the work was a set of measures that offer a solution to the following problems that arise while transiting employees to remote work: technical support for employees, monitoring the performance of team members, maintaining the effectiveness of employees. The results of the work can be useful for project managers or team leaders who are trying to establish a smooth functioning of the team, whose members were self-isolated.