Broadens the HCP lifecycle compatibility to N-3/4 (or 5 if possible), aligning it more closely with the OCP lifecycle and providing more flexibility for customers in the future. Balancing the trade-off between new management clusters as a requirement and keeping an existing management cluster to span multiple versions.

Testing Focus 

prioritize core MCE functionality. Test a representative set of N-3 combinations (e.g., 4.13 on 2.7, 4.15 on 2.8, etc.) to ensure broad compatibility.

The goal is to minimize the test effort with taking some risk but maximize the test coverage on all n ~ n-4 OCP versions in all supported platforms.

Deliverable

Updated HCP documentation clearly stating the N-3/4 (or 5 if possible) support policy, including a compatibility matrix of supported OCP and MCE/ACM versions.