An approach is provided for managing a timeout and polling interval of an operation of an application. A type of the application is received. Based on the type, it is determined that the application requires optimizations of the timeout and polling interval. Whether a data repository includes recommendations of timeout(s) and polling interval(s) for operation(s) of applications of the received type is determined. If the data repository includes the recommendations, a recommendation that specifies the timeout and polling interval is selected from the recommendations and the timeout and polling interval are applied to a deployed image, or if the data repository does not include the recommendations, a user entry of values for an optimal timeout and an optimal polling interval is received and a workload is deployed. The workload has a configuration that includes the values for the optimal timeout and the optimal polling interval.