- Assess Impact and Urgency: In my experience, addressing critical issues with immediate operational impact, such as network outages or security breaches, takes precedence over long-term upgrades. For example, one time at work, I resolved a router failure affecting multiple users before revisiting planned infrastructure changes. - Temporary Workarounds: One thing I’ve found helpful is implementing temporary fixes to restore functionality, like rerouting traffic during firewall failures. - Plan Parallel Upgrades: While fixing urgent issues, I document root causes to inform future upgrades, ensuring alignment with long-term goals. For instance, during a cyberattack, I secured systems before upgrading intrusion detection tools.

Urgent network issues are part of Fault management discovered via alarms (traps) or trouble reporting. Based on the scope of the network issue, they generally take precedence over all scheduled activities. Once corrected, infrastructure upgrades can resume. Couple of considerations: 1. Upgrades are performance management items that are initiated as result of continuous improvement, licensing, support or capacity concerns. Areas of network that are showing immediate concern can benefit from these changes and should be prioritized. 2. Clearly communicate the plan with customers and stakeholders to account for constraints.