The general principles of a Defect Management Process are as follows:

The primary goal is to prevent defects. Where this is not possible or practical, the goals are to find the defect as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact of the defect.

The defect management process, like the entire software development process, should be risk driven, i.e., strategies, priorities, and resources should be based on an assessment of the risk and the degree to which the expected impact of a risk can be reduced

Defect measurement should be integrated into the development process. Information on defects should be captured at the source as a natural by-product of doing the job. It should not be done after the fact by people unrelated to the project or system.

As much as possible, the capture and analysis of the information should be automated. The QA analyst should look for trends and perform a root-cause analysis to identify special and common cause problems.

Defect information should be used to improve the process. As imperfect or flawed processes cause most defects, processes may need to be altered to prevent defects.