In general, embodiments of the present invention provide an approach for pre-provisioning computing resource sub-components in order to achieve improved overall provisioning times. In a typical embodiment, when a workload request is received, a set/sequence of tasks needed to complete the workload request is identified. Based on the set of tasks, a set of corresponding computing resources is determined. Rather than provision each computing resource as a whole, embodiments of the present invention break each computing resource into its individual sub-components. Once the sub-components are identified, the time required to provision (i.e., provisioning time) each sub-component is determined (e.g., based on historical data). Based on these provisioning times, an optimal order in which the sub-components should be provisioned is determined, and the sub-components are then provisioned in this order.