The “Release Target Rule” ensures that all “Resulting Objects” are at an appropriate state for release and have an appropriate change management transition specified that is consistent with the assigned lifecycle transition rules. If the user selected transition is not defined for the current resulting object transition the rule should fail. The new “Release Rule” is part of the delivered "CHANGEABLE_PRE_RELEASE" business rule set.

Any undefined change management transition values in the Change Record associated with the plan for release is assumed to be the “Change” transition and its defined state. This approach provides equivalent backward compatibility. If the “Change” transition is not defined for the resulting object the rule should fail. A special case exists where the current state of the Changeable object does not have a defined “Change” transition, but is already at the release target state that is specified by the “Change” transition. This case should be permitted by exception.

For example, a part has the following lifecycle states "In Work", "Under Review" and "Released". A "Change" transition is defined on the "Under Review" state to transition to the "Released" state. The part is currently in the released state and has been added to the resulting objects table of a change task with some specified effectivity. The "Change" transition would be assumed even though the "Change" transition is defined on the "Released State" allowing the change to process. The part's state should not change but remain in the "Released" state.