A system receives one or more modifications to a platform-independent declarative specification from a set of data center entity owner teams to generate a modified platform-independent declarative specification that captures various aspects for deploying a data center on a target cloud platform. The system performs end-to-end validation of the modifications in multiple phases, starting with validating the modifications based on a set of predefined rules associated with the modified platform-independent declarative specification. When all the multiple phases of validation indicate success, the system a notification of end-to-end validation success in association with the received changes. Each request to modify a data center entity in the platform-independent declarative specification undergoes governance checks to ensure that the approver of the request belongs to a predefined set of owners associated with the data center entity.