From the first to the last page, this book leads you on a progressive walk through a real-time case of increasing complexity. It describes actual situations that you will encounter in a real world practice. The book provides a smooth introduction to rate monotonic analysis (RMA) and related topics for real-time software professionals and graduate students. Each of the book's chapters focuses on only one of the complex interdependent features of real-time systems at a time. It is also organized into three tiers to allow for a clearer understanding of the effects on each parameter: RMA Basics, Intermediate RMA, and Advanced RMA. The tools developed at each tier of the book allow you to assess the application schedulability and the exercises let you check your understanding of the topic. It presents RMA theory as simply as possible and clarifies it with relevant examples. The text progresses from simple to complex theory and techniques, contains innovative material, and focuses on the prevention rather than the correction of real-time performance problems.