A system and method for managing a network apparatus of a communication network. The system includes a network management center including a management-on-board manager MoB-M and a management-on-board agent MoB-A executed at the network apparatus. During its execution, the agent MoB-A performs at least part of a management task on the network apparatus. Besides, during its execution the agent MoB-A retrieves at least one instruction from the manager MoB-M, and executes it for completing the management task. This way, the manager MoB-M may dynamically adapt the behavior of the agent MoB-A to unforeseen events or changes occurring in the network, without the need to rewrite the whole agent logic.