Component Failure Impact Analysis (CFIA) is a method to evaluate the impact of IT component failures and identify single points of failure. There are 3 steps to conducting a CFIA: 1) Identify all components that an IT service depends on; 2) Create a matrix listing the components and services, and mark each component's impact and backup; 3) Examine components with no backup or that cause outages to evaluate risk and identify changes to reduce risk or add redundancy. Done simply with a spreadsheet, CFIA helps improve availability, justify investments, and aid other IT processes like configuration management and problem resolution.