Read this guide in its entirety so you are familiar with all tasks you will need to perform.

Read the product release notes. The release notes provide information on new functionality. Read the information for every release for your old release + 1 through the new release.

Read the product readmes for the new release, including the readme for the Software AG Infrastructure. All readmes are available on the Software AG Documentation website. The product readmes contain this information:

Critical information and known and resolved issues for your products.

Changes to product behavior, services, parameters, properties, and APIs. Such changes can include additions, changes, deprecations, and removals. This information is especially important because you might need to modify product files or assets after migration to accommodate the changes.

Go to the Knowledge Center on the Empower Product Support Website and read tech articles (for example, KB 1788395). Use keywords such as upgrade to search for relevant tech articles, and search for your old release, your new release, and all releases in between.

Define an upgrade approach and a cut-over plan. If you have a large landscape, you might want to do a phased upgrade.

Set up operating guidelines that cover normal project management requirements across all affected groups in your organization.

Define an approach to source control, and set up release management tools and procedures that support the migration of data into target environments.

Account for externals to your Software AG environment, such as clients that communicate with your Software AG products and that might need endpoint URL, host name, or IP address updates.

As part of upgrading, you will take a baseline of the old environment and use that baseline to perform the upgrade procedure. Software AG recommends a code freeze while you are migrating the baseline to the new environment.

Many upgrade issues are caused by forgotten environmental settings. Plan, document, and test these thoroughly.

For complex projects that require extensive system testing, extended code freeze might not be possible. In this case, define a change management strategy to track code changes that occur in the old environment. After testing is complete on the baseline, this will enable you to merge the code changes into the baseline and re-test the new baseline.