Platform & DevOps·Running it: capacity, failure and recovery
you fell four versions behind and now the upgrade is a project, because you can only move one version at a time.
Patch cadence
Also calledpatching cadence, upgrade cadence, version skew
How regularly the platform's own components — nodes, orchestrator, plugins, base images — are updated. Falling behind compounds nonlinearly: support windows close, upgrades must be taken in sequence, and each step's incompatibilities arrive together. Frequent small upgrades are boring and cheap; infrequent large ones are a quarterly project with an incident attached.