During a release of droolsjbpm (= droolsjbpm-knowledge, drools, jbpm, guvnor, drools-planner, droolsjbpm-tools, ...) we follow this release procedure:
https://github.com/droolsjbpm/droolsjbpm-build-bootstrap/blob/master/README.md#releasing-from-a-release-branch

At one point we call this script to update the version number:
https://github.com/droolsjbpm/droolsjbpm-build-bootstrap/blob/master/script/release/update-version-all.sh

That script does several calls like this:

mvn -Dfull versions:update-parent -N -DparentVersion=$newVersion -DallowSnapshots=true

Which use the versions-maven-plugin's goal update-parent:
http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/update-parent-mojo.html
Which does not work as expected:
It always updates to the latest, highest parent version, ignoring the parameter. For example:
If ($newVersion == 5.3.2.Final) but 5.4.0.Final exists in the repositories, it uses 5.4.0.Final.

This has been reported:
https://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MVERSIONS-161 (rejected due to confusion)
https://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MVERSIONS-185 (open and clearer)

We need to fix MVERSIONS-185, ask the versions-maven-plugin to pull the changes and get it released (Paul Gier or John Casey might be able to help there).