Abstract: A system implementing a social paradigm for information technology (IT) services and social knowledge management in an IT environment. Physical and non-physical objects in the IT environment are represented by IT objects which are a type of social objects with social features. Each IT object has an activity stream for capturing communications, notifications, and knowledge related to the IT object. An activity stream manager may detect a change to an IT object, automatically generate a post, topic, or comment about the change, and place it in the activity stream of the IT object. For any IT object affected by the change, the activity stream manager may update an associated activity stream to reflect the change and may notify various users of the update in real time. A user interface is provided for the users to, among others, collaborate in the context of the change.

Abstract: A perspective management system configured for providing a perspective editor through which users in the IT environment can build perspectives. A perspective specifies a set of IT objects representing a portion of the IT environment that a user or a group of users care about. The perspective management system implements a social networking paradigm. As such, each IT object has an activity stream configured for capturing communications, notifications, and knowledge related to the IT object. Perspectives are themselves IT objects. Therefore, each perspective also has an activity stream. In response to a request from a client device such as for an impact analysis on a change, an incident, or a problem, the system constructs a graphical view for display on the client device showing a potential impact on objects in one or more of the perspectives involved.