Programmatic root cause analysis of application performance problems is provided in accordance with various embodiments. Transactions having multiple components can be monitored to determine if they are exceeding a threshold for their execution time. Monitoring the transactions can include instrumenting one or more applications to gather component level information. For transactions exceeding a threshold, the data collected for the individual components can be analyzed to automatically diagnose the potential cause of the performance problem. Time-series analytical techniques are employed to determine normal values for transaction and component execution times. The values can be dynamic or static. Deviations from these normal values can be detected and reported as a possible cause. Other filters in addition to or in place of execution times for transactions and components can also be used.