A method includes obtaining, from a service management database, one or more change tickets and one or more incident tickets relating to an information technology infrastructure, defining one or more change-incident pairs based on linkages between the incident tickets and the change tickets, identifying, from the change-incident pairs, one or more dimensions affecting outcomes of implementation of one or more change types, generating at least one recommendation for altering implementation of subsequent changes of a given change type to the information technology infrastructure based on the identified dimensions, applying the at least one recommendation to the implementation of one or more subsequent changes of the given change type to configuration items in the information technology infrastructure, monitoring the information technology infrastructure to determine outcomes of the subsequent changes of the given change type, and modifying the at least one recommendation responsive to the monitoring.