1. A method for managing a contended computer system resource comprising: measuring a resource performance metric; for each of a selected plurality of clients, determining a client performance metric; for each of the selected plurality of clients, determining a relationship measure as a function of the resource performance metric and the respective client performance metric; determining a degree of resource contention effect for each of the selected plurality of clients as a function of the respective relationship measure; and taking a resource-related action according to the respective relationship measures.