Defect Lifecycle and Quality Gates Questions

Focuses on managing defects through their complete lifecycle and on higher level quality control mechanisms. Includes stages of the defect lifecycle such as new, open, assigned, resolved, verified, and closed, plus triage workflows, assignment and escalation rules, and prioritization frameworks for severity and urgency. Covers advanced practices such as tracking defect trends and metrics over time, root cause analysis, defect density and escape rate, service level agreements for fixes, and use of defect data to drive continuous improvement. Explains design and enforcement of quality gates and release criteria that prevent regressions or critical issues from reaching production while balancing developer velocity, and integration of defect gating with automated testing and continuous integration pipelines.