A system and method for determining a configuration of a plurality of tasks to meet the specified deadline of a linear workflow of a real-time heterogeneous network. Often times, while meeting expected application performance in the heterogeneous network, it may possible to have graceful degradation of quality for ensuring timing constraints at the same time. In a multi-layered architecture, where each layer is equipped with multiple computational resources, the time optimization for each of the plurality of tasks can be achieved through approximate computing and analyzing all possible configurations of each task in a workflow within a particular layer.