Synchronization of configuration changes in a process plant

Techniques for synchronizing configuration changes in a process plant allow for intelligent and efficient updates to objects and related dependent objects. Additionally, techniques for synchronizing minor configuration changes in a process plant enable real-time updates to objects during run-time. Such techniques reduce the amount of downtime for online operation of the process plant and reduce the amount of information transmitted over the process control network. Each object may correspond to a process entity and dependent objects may be referenced by or may reference the object. In some cases, when an engineer modifies an object, dependent objects with respect to the modified object that have pending modifications are identified and displayed to the engineer. The engineer then selects the dependent objects to sync with the modified object and the dependent objects and modified object are synced and executed by a corresponding device in the run-time system.