A system and method for creating reusable management instrumentation for information technology (IT) resources is presented. Management instrumentation accesses a resource using an instrumentation library type (ILT) and an access path. The ILT is a basic programming model to access a resource, such as SQL and shell scripts. The ILT may be a resource specific ILT, a command ILT, or an object ILT. A resource specific ILT is used to access a specific resource. A command ILT is used in conjunction with an access path to access a particular resource. Management instrumentation re-uses command ILT's by selecting different access paths to combine with the command ILT to access different resources. An object ILT allows management instrumentation to communicate with object-based resource interfaces, such as with management beans. A translation table may be used in conjunction with an object ILT to allow the object ILT to communicate with the object-based resource interface.