Consider keeping old software installers
Our number one recommendation for mitigating the negative effects of a problematic system update, or any other software revision for that matter, is the creation of a startup drive clone with a utility like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner directly prior to applying said update. When things go wrong, the clone can be quickly copied back to your original startup drive, or you can simply startup from the clone and get back to work immediately.
If you are for some reason loathe to clone (lack of a properly-sized external drive, an odd phobia of clones, etc.), an alternative is to keep old copies of old update installers handy. Apple does not generally maintain old versions of various applications -- like iTunes -- nor some system update revisions (delta and combo Mac OS X updaters are notable exceptions). As such, keeping older copies of system updates on hand can sometimes allow you to revert your system to a state prior to the update without needing to reinstall Mac OS X or restore from a clone.
There's one hurdle to jump when reverting to earlier versions of applications or system components, however. Many installers will not allow you to overwrite newer versions of the items they contain. This can be easily overcome with the aid of Pacifist, which can force installation of packages. Just open the old-version package with Pacifist, click on the name of the package in the displayed list, then click the Install button in the upper-left corner and follow the on-screen instructions.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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When I use Software Update, I always use the Install and Save Package (or something like that) command from the menu bar, instead of just clicking the button in the dialog. When the installer finishes, it opens the folder which contains the saved updaters, and I move them to my archive.
I am responsible for quite a few Macs and have given up on the idea of creating bootable backups. They're not reliably bootable and they take an awful lot of bandwidth and storage space to do regularly. Even with SuperDuper, which has been the best in my experience, there are a few machines in a few situations where the clone won't boot. fortunately, I've only had to restore a machine from full backup once in three years. (I mostly do cloning for quick setup of similarly configured machines rather than disaster recovery). For backups, it's much more important to backup User folders, Applications and a few other things so you can use the migration assistant to restore to a fresh install of OS X.
Do you have an exact method that you'd share with the rest of us so we can do the same? I like your advice I just want to make sure I'm backing the necessary items. It would be great if we could have a "backup user data, network and applications" method.
One thing that stinks about this are all of the applications that put little files all throughout the system and library folders when they shouldn't. It makes recovery a bit of a pain.
Thanks for your advice.
Have peace,
James
The devil's in the details, as usual. The basic method is very simple but it does have limitations. What you do is make one full backup and then limit the incremental backups (or syncronization) to the Users folder and possibly a few others. It works very well with user settings and data but you would need a lot of testing to be sure it will work when it comes to system level stuff. The migration assistant doesn't work at all for things installed in the BSD subsystem. The point is to have a backup that's good enough that it gets the important things but doesn't take excessive time. This is a much easier goal for basic users than advanced ones.
The background is that I had some full backups of machines which were supposed to have been bootable but turned out not to be. Fortunately, this was mostly in testing and not in actual recovery but the one case I had where a user's HD was destroyed by flooding due to a burst pipe, their full backup was not bootable. In all cases, so far, I have found that a non-bootable backup still works as a source for the Migration Assistant. I'm not sure exactly what the minimum requirements are for the Migration Assistant to recognize a volume but I will work on that when I have time.
I too have the responsibility for many Macs (over 200) and I regularly use bootable clones for migrations, etc. I use Synchronize Pro X & have had no problems what so ever. SuperDuper is good and cheap but sometimes fails to make a complete bootable clone.
Lack of foresight led me to choose what SuperDuper creator said was the best - now I'm about to install a new, larger internal drive and must first clone my System, User Folder and of course all applications to my external drive.