First Step is to Start a Project...
How will you conduct a project? Shall I say the steps as Starting, Planning, Running, Observing and Controlling, Stopping the project.
But project management is not just about these steps. It also requires a PM to have deep understanding on the functional areas such as Finance, Purchase/Procure, Sales, Contracts, Law, Manufacturing, Inventory/Supply chain, Organizational behavior.
Its about overall management and interacting with these functional areas as well.
Project Manager is required to understand overall business function and perform the project management steps to perfection. The idea is to equip/enable a PM to face any crisis/situation from these functional areas and if required, interact and solve the same.
In simpler terms, it is not just project management, not just people management, not just technical management but overall functional management to achieve the desired results.