I'm interested in understanding each of your upgrade scenarios.
I'll assume that you are not interested in updating to the latest version of Pro. Can you share in the comments your scenario(s)? For example, you're on ArcGIS Pro 3.4.x and want to update to 3.5.x? Can you share why - organization considerations, constraints, etc?
Organizations cannot arbitrarily upgrade to the latest version of ArcGIS Pro without careful consideration. There are several key dependencies that must be evaluated to ensure compatibility and system stability, including:
Third-party add-ins and integrations
Alignment between Portal for ArcGIS and Utility Network (UN) versions with the ArcGIS Pro version
These dependencies must be reviewed and validated before proceeding with any upgrade.
When maps or projects are created in a newer version of ArcGIS Pro, they may include features, data structures, or symbology that are not supported in older versions of the software.
ArcGIS Pro is generally not backward compatible, meaning newer versions can open older projects, but older versions cannot reliably open projects created in newer releases.
When internally troubleshooting ESRI issues, we eliminate the "what version of Pro are you on" from the equation.
For these reasons, we force all users in the company to be on the same version of Pro.
Thanks for the additional detail @Tom_Laue The reasoning makes sense. You indicate that you force all users in the company to be on the same version of Pro. Since that is the case, who would this "version selection dropdown" be for when upgrading? If an administrator is controlling the version for all end users, can we assume that updates have been disabled for end users and you're deploying updates through silent installs?
Since you do have all users locked to an LTS companion pair (e.g. Pro 3.5/Enterprise 11.5), I'm curious whether you use the UpdateTargetVersion setting. Or do you also push out the latest patch to all users at the same time?
As an aside:
ArcGIS Pro is generally not backward compatible, meaning newer versions can open older projects, but older versions cannot reliably open projects created in newer releases.
ArcGIS Pro versions follow the semantic versioning specification meaning that backward compatibility _within_ a major version is guaranteed. That is, ArcGIS Pro 3.0 will be able to open any ArcGIS Pro 3.x.x project. As you said, of course the older versions are not aware of capabilities added later, but the project will still reliably open. Refer to https://doc.esri.com/en/arcgis-pro/latest/get-started/releases-and-patches.html
I was simply giving clarity for why some individuals or organizations wish to upgrade only to a specific version of Pro, not the latest release. -ESRI Support often offers "upgrade Pro" as the solution but that's not always practical.
For my company, IT rights are needed to install software so none of our users can upgrade Pro themselves.
But for other organizations (ex. a consultant who needs to upgrade to a certain version to match their client) I can see where having this ability would be useful.
I don't know the backend work ESRI would need to do to make it possible but I give a Thumbs Up to this idea however.
Having this functionality would be super helpful. Many orgs require users to not upgrade beyond a certain software version for various reasons. With Pro, if you miss the window to upgrade to that version, there isn't any way to select a lower version of the software to upgrade to. For example, if an org doesn't want users to upgrade to a version beyond 3.5, but a user is on 3.4 and the current release is 3.7, that user doesn't have any way to upgrade to 3.5 with the out-of-the-box software upgrade tools.
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