Yes, that is the expected behavior. The reason for asking for that is that the VM is in a inconsistent state and the Edit dialog provides additional validation and warnings (by highlighting problematic fields) which the user can resolve/fix. Sometimes it's changed automatically so it looks like a useless open&save, but unfortunately that code is only on the frontend side so it needs to be done like that
Reviewed and merged.
The updated content for this bug is now available here: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_virtualization/4.1/html-single/upgrade_guide/#Changing_the_Cluster_Compatibility_Version