1. A method for selectively operating on changed elements in a software development environment, the software development environment comprising a set of at least one defect associated with a software project, the software project comprising a plurality of version-controlled software development objects, each defect being associated with at least one changed element, each changed element comprising a modified version-controlled software development object, the method comprising: generating, for each of the changed elements in the software project, a work item comprising an identifier of the changed element, an operation for the changed element, and a target for said operation; generating a master work list comprising the said work items chronologically ordered; and for each unique version-controlled software development object associated with the changed elements of each work item in the master work list, executing all work items associated with the unique element in chronological order.