A channel-growth plan for an optical transmission system selects channels such that the transients that result in the channels that survive a network failure, such as an upstream fiber cut, are either minimized or effectively handled by some transient-control technique. In one embodiment, the growth plan may try to keep post-transient surviving channel total power gain equal to the pre-transient total power gain. Alternatively, the growth plan may try to distribute the surviving channels uniformly over the pre-transient channel-frequency range. Other manifestations are to keep (1) the average power of the surviving channels substantially equal to the average power of the pre-transient channels or (2) the average power of the post-transient surviving channels substantially equal to the power level of a specified channel. Transient-control can be balanced with conventional low-cost and high-performance goals to provide an effective hybrid channel-growth plan.