A method for discovering representative composite configuration item (CI) patterns in an IT system that includes a plurality of configuration items may include data mining a graph representing the IT system to extract extended frequent composite CI patterns. The method may also include clustering the extended frequent composite CI patterns into clusters based on similarity between the maximal frequent composite CI patterns. The method may further include extracting a representative composite CI pattern for each of the clusters, and using an output device, outputting the representative composite CI pattern for each of the clusters.