Patent ID: 8276152

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a change order to be executed at a scheduled time, wherein the received change order is included in both a first change plan and a second change plan and the received change order defines a change to an Information Technology (IT) environment; validating the received change order against validation rules to simulate execution of the received change order at the scheduled time; detecting a revision to the received change order resulting in a revised change order; responsive to detecting the revision, re-validating at least: one or more first change orders that are downstream of the revised change order in the first change plan, and one or more second change orders that are downstream of the revised change order in the second change plan; and outputting results of the re-validating, wherein the re-validating comprises detecting breaks in the one or more first change orders that are downstream of the revised change order in the first change plan or the one or more second change orders that are downstream of the revised change order in the second change plan, wherein the received change order includes: a change workflow including machine readable instructions for executing the received change order; a change update query including one or more queries that, when applied to a model of the IT environment, update one or more states of objects and relationships in the model to reflect execution of the received change order; and a change process temporary impact query that returns causes that will become true when the received change order is enacted, and wherein at least the re-validating is performed by a computing device.