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Nothing much shipped in December 2021. That is exactly what made it useful: 2.4.4 was landing in April 2022 with PHP 8.1 support, OpenSearch adoption and a round of security hardening, and the quiet month was the last good window to prepare for it.
Start with a truthful inventory
List every custom module and extension you run, with versions, vendors and known issues. Vendor-bundled extensions (VBEs) were being removed in 2.4.4 — Braintree excepted — so each one needs a confirmed Marketplace replacement, an upgrade path and a support commitment behind it. Where two extensions do the same job, this is the moment to drop one.
Benchmark before you change anything
Capture baselines for build time, Lighthouse scores, API latency and peak behaviour. Without them you cannot show what PHP 8.1 actually bought you. Set expectations at the same time: some of the gain arrives on its own, and some of it needs small refactors before you see any of it.
Rehearse the upgrade
Build a disposable branch, switch CI to PHP 8.1 and spin up a short-lived test environment. Smoke test checkout, payments, shipping rates and customer account flows — and GraphQL too if you run headless journeys. What breaks tells you the size of the job and where the hot spots are, such as any direct session reads that have to come out for 2.4.4.
The checklist
Hosting readiness. Confirm PHP 8.1 images and OpenSearch support; adjust resources and JVM settings where required.
Extension plan. Map every module to a supported path, and remove dead code rather than patching around it.
Data and content. Refresh staging data and media, anonymise customer records, clear out test accounts.
Change calendar. Book the maintenance windows and agree who owns the rollback before anyone starts.
What this means for you
A large technical change becomes predictable when the unknowns are cleared in advance rather than discovered in week six. December was the cheap time to clear them.