This issue impacts 9.0.0-rc.0 and happened while updating https://github.com/vmware/clarity.

After a failed update such as described in #16019, the project will have already been updated to the latest versions.

Attempting to update again will inform the user that everything is up to date.

kamik@RED-X1C6 MINGW64 /d/sandbox/clarity (update-9)
$ ng update @angular/cli @angular/core --next --force
Using package manager: 'npm'
Collecting installed dependencies...
Found 109 dependencies.
Fetching dependency metadata from registry...
Package '@angular/cli' is already up to date.
Package '@angular/core' is already up to date.

This is inaccurate as the update did not actually complete successfully. To redo the update, a user will have to manually undo commits and reinstall packages, and only then will they be able to attempt to update again.