In Russia they are starting an 18-month total isolation experiment to see how a 6-man crew will handle a simulated mission to Mars:

Mars500 – An 18-month complete-isolation simulated Mars mission is about to begin

But the reality is that a real manned mission to Mars would be astronomically expensive and is not likely to happen anytime soon. A robotic sample return mission to Mars is a more likely first step, as described here:

NASA wants mission to bring Martian rocks to Earth

Space policy experts think the timing is right despite the risks and hefty price tag.

“We’re about out of things to do on Mars other than a sample return,” said George Washington University space scholar John Logsdon. “It is an extremely expensive undertaking, probably the most expensive robotic mission to Mars and clearly the most complex.”

This video shows you how the simplest possible MSR mission might unfold:

This is as simple as it gets in MSR thinking. There is an orbiter, a lander (with a drill) and a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) that gets the sample from the surface back to the orbiter. The orbiter then contains the vehicle that gets the sample back to earth.

There are more advanced ideas as well. The article above describes one possibility:

As currently envisioned, a pair of rovers would launch in 2018 to a spot where water once flowed. One would drill below the surface; the other would collect rocks and dirt and seal them in containers.

Several years later, some cosmic choreography would be used to get the bounty back to Earth. One spacecraft would touch down to collect the samples and launch them into orbit around Mars where a rendezvousing spacecraft would capture the bounty and return it to Earth.

Even if those challenging tag-team missions went as planned, the first Mars samples would not be returned until the 2020s.

A mission like that could conceivably happen in three or four launches. One or two launches get the rovers to Mars. Another launch gets a lander with the MAV on the surface near the rovers. Another launch gets to orbiter with the earth return vehicle into orbit to accept the samples from the MAV and fly them back to earth.

If you would like to learn more, this lecture contains a lot of detail. The actual description of the vehicles starts that the 25:00 point:

Lecture: Mars Sample Return

More info: ESA: Mars Sample Return