A method of recovering a plurality of network elements from a network outage, including receiving, at a network management system (NMS), a plurality of recovery requests from the plurality of network elements; determining, by the NMS, a sequence for processing the plurality of recovery requests based on a plurality of priority values associated with the plurality of network elements, wherein a priority value of the plurality of priority values is based on at least one key performance indicator (KPI) associated with a corresponding network element of the plurality of network elements; and recovering the plurality of network elements based on the determined sequence.