A method includes providing device management services to a managed device by defining one or more transaction control primitives and one or more transaction initiation commands for modifying a management tree of a managed device, mapping the transaction control primitives and transaction initiation commands to device management commands for the managed device, transmitting the device management commands to the managed device, determining a relevance of any of the transmitted device management commands that fail to execute, and based on the relevance determination, allowing the managed device to modify the management tree without executing the commands that fail to execute.