Simulation creates a safe place to make control mistakes quickly. Define the plant state, actuator limits, sensor noise, and a deterministic time step before implementing the controller.
Plot the reference, measured output, control effort, and error together. A controller that reaches the target while constantly saturating the actuator is not healthy.
Add disturbances and parameter variation after the nominal case works. The useful question is not whether one simulation succeeds, but where the design stops being reliable.