Before You Update or Upgrade To The Latest Software - Part 2

It’s important for software updates/upgrades to be properly tested and evaluated in non-production environments and on non-production workstations, to the extent possible, before being deployed company-wide on live production workstations and in a live production environment.

Not all software updates/upgrades necessarily need to go through the same rigorous testing and evaluation. Typically, major software updates/upgrades should go through more rigorous testing and evaluation before being deployed to live environments (ex: new version release of an operating system) to ensure compatibility and support with existing hardware and software. This way, you will know what works and what does not work, have an opportunity to identify workarounds and fixes, research when full support and compatibility will be available for other critical software that you may be using and upgrade any incompatible existing hardware and software.

For non-major software updates/upgrades, waiting a few days to a few weeks before performing the updates/upgrades will allow time for bugs/issues to be reported to the software manufacturer and for bug fixes and workarounds to be issued. Thereafter, you may further test, evaluate and gradually roll out the updates/upgrades to determine any other impacts within your environment.