1. A method for determining the source of failing to achieve a desired level of service quality in communication between at least two components in a distributed system, the method comprising the steps of: developing a model of the distributed system, the model including at least configuration non-specific representations of types of managed components, and representations of relationships among the managed components; determining associated managed components for each route of data communication between the at least two components; augmenting the representation of the associated managed components with information associated with each of the routes of data communication; monitoring at least one performance criterion of the communication between the at least two components; and determining a source of degradation when the performance criteria is indicated to be outside acceptable limits, wherein step of determining a source of degradation comprises the steps of: representing problems associated with each of the types of managed components; producing a data structure for presenting the propagation of the problems from by combining a plurality of the configuration non-specific representations of instances of managed components associated with each route; and determining, from the data structure, a problem source from the performance criteria indication.