Techniques for analyzing software in which un-instrumented components can be discovered and conditionally instrumented during a runtime of the software. Initially, software such as an application can be configured with a baseline set of instrumented components such as methods. As the application runs, performance data gathered from the instrumentation may indicate that the performance of some methods is below expectations. To analyze this, any methods which are callable from a method at issue are discovered, such as by inspecting the byte code of loaded classes in a JAVA Virtual Machine (JVM). To limit and focus the diagnosis, the instrumentation which is added to the discovered components can be conditional, so that the instrumentation is executed only in a specified context. The context can involve, e.g., a specified sequence of components in which a discovered component is called, and/or transaction data in which a discovered component is called.