In her book Thinking in Bets, author Annie Dukes writes:
[decisions] aren’t right or wrong based on whether they turn out well on any particular iteration. An unwanted result doesn’t make our decision wrong if we thought about the alternatives and probabilities in advance and allocated our resources accordingly...
With any outcome, positive or not, it’s important that we don’t ignore the process that got us to where we are.
Both great planning and luck can lead to a desired outcome. But they can also take a project completely sideways.
The big difference between the two is that one gives us something to point to and learn from, the other, not so much.