A process for use in managing a hydrocarbon production system includes: selecting, from among a plurality of changes proposed to operating parameters of the hydrocarbon production system, the proposed change with the greatest estimated positive change in production; assessing whether the selected change violates an operating constraint; based on said assessment, producing a valid change based on at least the selected change or identifying the selected change as an unusable change, iterating the above steps, the iteration excluding the valid change from the plurality of proposed changes; and implementing at least one valid change, the number of implemented valid changes being less than the number of proposed changes.