Defect Life Cycle

A bug doesn't just get "fixed" — it moves through a defined set of states, and knowing where it sits tells the whole team what's true and what to do next.

The typical states

• New — reported, not yet reviewed.
• Triaged — reviewed, severity and priority assigned, may be assigned to an owner.
• In progress — someone is actively fixing it.
• Fixed — a change has been made, awaiting verification.
• Verified — QA confirms the fix actually resolves the issue.
• Closed — done. Sometimes split into Closed–fixed and Closed–won't fix / Closed–duplicate / Closed–not reproducible.
• Reopened — verification failed, or the bug came back; it re-enters the cycle.

Why this matters

Without an explicit cycle, "fixed" gets used loosely — a developer marks something fixed the moment they believe it's resolved, and it never gets independently verified. The Verified step exists specifically to catch fixes that don't actually work or that introduce a new problem.

In practice

Autonomous testing changes how bugs enter this cycle (findings arrive with a screenshot and reproduction steps already attached, see how to review a run) but the life cycle itself — triage, fix, verify, close — stays the same. Verification is a good place to re-run the same autonomous check that originally caught the bug, to confirm the fix on the same terms it was found.