Self-adaptive systems reconfigure themselves to improve their operation when changes in the environment imply to do so. Reconfiguration usually means the replacement or modification of some functional components so that the new components provide better performance, more robust operation, or better functionality. Such a reconfiguration, however, may cause undesirable transient effects, which may (temporarily) degrade the performance of the overall system. This paper investigates two important aspects of transient management: (1) the proper choice of the structure that has advantageous transient properties (to be chosen in design-time); and (2) the proper run-time transient management.