This *iMore* article strikes me as particularly important after my recent experience upgrading to iOS 6. During my upgrade, restoring from my iCloud backups seemed to either fail completely or result in only a partial restore of my applications. Thankfully, I performed a backup to my computer a few weeks prior that I was able to use to restore my device.
My lessons learned as result:
1. Make sure I backup my iOS devices to my computer at least every two weeks(*I set a repeating Omnifocus task for this*).
2. On the day before any iOS update, backup my iOS device to my computer.
I intend to continue using iCloud as my “automatic” / “nightly” backup mechanism, but I will be supplementing that with backups to iTunes on my computer going forward.