I have worked on a couple of projects like control of a quadrotor/ self balancing robot/ 6 dof robotic arm using nonlinear, optimal and adaptive control. So, in all these projects I have first basically tried to understand the dynamics of the system, then I modeled it. Next I applied different control strategies and compared their responses and chose the best one.

My question is when approaching problems in industry or in research, is the approach for these simple bots fine or are there other things that I should consider. 

EDIT:
Can someone who has worked/ has experience in this area, put a step by step approach that should be done to approach any control problem in any field. With the necessary concepts and skills needed.