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Computerworld - Like many Macintosh administrators, I'm confronted with a question: How and when should I begin upgrading to Panther?

Working in a college setting, the question has a certain timeliness to it, since I'm a couple of weeks out from winter break, which will be the only feasible time to undertake such a project until the end of the spring semester. Given that I'm not alone in asking this question, I've decided to focus on the ways to ensure a successful upgrade or deployment. And I'm not limiting this discussion to Panther, because these guidelines apply to upgrades of any operating system, server, hardware, applications -- or even the installation of an entire new infrastructure.

Ryan Faas has been an IT professional and technology writer specializing in Macintosh for nearly 10 years. Currently managing the Mac OS X Server and Macintosh workstations for a community college in upstate New York, he has deployed, administered and trained users in Mac and mixed network installations in institutions ranging from small graphic-design firms and school districts to major media companies. He is also co-author of Troubleshooting, Maintaining and Repairing Macs (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 2000).

Documentation

There is nothing more important than documenting a major project, such as a company or institutionwide upgrade, or even one that affects a few dozen workstations and users.

If you are doing anything beyond a vanilla installation for a single workstation, it can be invaluable to have notes on what you want to achieve, how you plan to achieve it, what happened when you tried this or that solution and what steps you took to correct problems that occurred during the process. This is incredibly important if you are deploying similar workstations or servers in multiple locations, or if you are working as part of a team.

Research

The first thing to do is research the product you're deploying. In the case of a major upgrade, such as installing an XServe and migrating from Mac OS X Server 10.1 to Panther, this will involve a lot of lead time and work before making a purchase. In the case of upgrading a lab to Photoshop 8 and Quark 6, it might simply mean checking for known problems after the media arrives, before or during the first installations.

The more your environment differs from the generic Mac OS on a single workstation with no network other than the Internet, the more research you should do. A great example that I discovered a while back was that Macromedia Fireworks has problems saving PNG files when run on workstations that are tied into an OS X Server for directory services and user authentication.

Granted, you'll probably never uncover every potential problem before everything is up and running, and you'll come across issues that will never affect you. However, the ability to head off major problems beforehand -- or at least know wha