Change impact analysis takes days without a CMDB — engineers email around asking 'who depends on this server?' and guess at the blast radius, so changes either ship blind or stall for a week waiting for answers. Full CMDB deployments are too heavy for mid-market teams.

Utilyx models service mapping as a lightweight executable workflow: CI dependencies are stored in a sql-query-backed table, the map renders visually, and impact analysis runs in real time when a change or incident is opened.

The workflow is structured as a decision tree with 3 branches (Change impact, Incident blast radius, Map maintenance) and 6 steps end-to-end. Each step is executed by a named actor (Trigger event, sql-query, Mapping engine, usePDF, Service owner, CMDB steward) and every action is timestamped.

• Step 1 (Start — Trigger event): the workflow fires from three triggers — a change request is opened, a P1/P2 incident is logged, or a scheduled map refresh runs. Fields: trigger_type, source_ci_id, event_id, urgency.

• Step 2 (sql-query): the engine runs a recursive SQL query against the ci_dependencies table (parent_ci_id, child_ci_id, dependency_type, criticality) to compute the full upstream and downstream dependency graph for the source CI — depth configurable, default 4 levels.

• Step 3 (Routing): three branches — Branch A (change impact): the map highlights all CIs affected by the proposed change, flags critical path dependencies, and lists the business services impacted; Branch B (incident blast radius): the map shows every service and user group affected by the incident in real time, updated as the incident evolves; Branch C (map maintenance): the CMDB steward reviews CIs flagged as 'orphan' (no dependencies) or 'conflict' (dependency mismatch with discovery scan).

• Step 4A (Mapping engine): the visual map renders in the workflow UI — nodes are CIs, edges are dependencies, color codes criticality (red=mission-critical, orange=important, green=standard). The Service owner can drill into any node to see CI metadata (owner, location, vendor, license expiry).

• Step 5A (usePDF): for change requests, a topology map PDF is auto-generated (topology_map.pdf) showing the affected subgraph, and attached to the RFC for CAB review. For incidents, the blast-radius map is attached to the incident timeline.

• Step 6A (Service owner / CMDB steward): the Service owner confirms the impact assessment for changes; the CMDB steward resolves orphan and conflict flags during map maintenance. Both actions update the ci_dependencies table and refresh the map.

Teams that adopt Utilyx report change impact analysis cut from 3 days to under 1 hour, zero blind-shipped changes because every RFC carries a visual dependency map, and P1 incident blast radius computed in real time so the IT manager knows immediately which business services are affected.

The lightweight CMDB (sql-query-backed, no heavy deployment) fits mid-market teams, the topology PDF gives the CAB a visual artifact instead of a spreadsheet, and the map maintenance branch keeps dependencies accurate without a full discovery tool.