What are the key factors in managing a project?

To answer at this very interesting question, it’s important, in the first time, to define the two words which give all the sense at this last one: management and project.
Easily, a project is “a temporary endeavour undertaken to achieve a particular aim”. (Principles of Management, Kreitner)
The management is a topic including many different fundamental ideas. Economists, managers or sociologists try to find a definition of this term that seems very complicated. Henry Mintzberg said “Management is a practice that has to combine a good deal of craft, namely experience, with a certain amount of art, as vision and insight, and some science, particularly in the form of analysis and technique”. It’s an example of the view of this management book’s author. A simple definition we can find is the following “Management is the process of working with and through others to achieve organizational objectives in a changing environment”. (Principles of Management, Kreitner) This definition means the Management is a social process. Effectively, with a good management, people of a team are able to work together and to product something with the participation of each one in a different field.
Now, we can focus on the key factors in managing a project. There are many including the following: planning, decision making, organising, staffing, communicating, motivating, leading and to finish controlling.
Firstly, commonly referred to as the primary management function, planning is “the coping with uncertainly by formulating courses of action to achieve specified results.” (Principles of Management, Kreitner) If an organisation is to achieve the objectives it has itself then it must plan courses of action that will enable to attain these goals. Without proper planning, the organisation is at the mercy of management whims and external pressures, and it will quickly lose sight of its objectives. So planning is very important