Methods and systems are provided for performance management methodology and exception report workflows in a performance management system. A performance management methodology workflow may assist a user in performing a plurality of performance management tasks in a performance management system: detecting a performance problem in a computer system, identifying a root cause of the performance problem in a particular application tier or particular system component, improving the performance of the computer system by implementing a solution to the root cause, and verifying that the solution to the root cause has improved the performance problem. An exception report workflow may include defining a plurality of exceptions for a managed computer system comprising a plurality of application tiers. One or more of the plurality of exceptions is triggered in response to collected performance metrics. An exception report which comprises performance metrics related to the one or more triggered exceptions is automatically generated.