A method and apparatus for locating a target operation object in a Device Management (DM) system. In one embodiment, the DM system includes a DM server and a DM client. The DM server is configured to send a Delete command to the DM client, wherein the Delete command comprises MO location information for identifying an MO, and feature node information for identifying an MO instance of the MO and wherein a Target element is not included in the Delete command. The DM client is configured to: receive the Delete command; after receiving the Delete command, determine an absolute Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of a root node of the MO instance according to the MO location information and the feature node information, wherein the absolute URI starts from a root node of a management tree; locate the root node of the MO instance according to the absolute URI of the root node of the MO instance; and delete the root node of the MO instance.