Bug life cycles are similar to software development life cycles. At any time during the software development life cycle errors can be made during the gathering of requirements, requirements analysis, functional design, internal design, documentation planning, document preparation, coding, unit testing, test planning, integration, testing, maintenance, updates, re-testing and phase-out.

Bug life cycle begins when a programmer, software developer, or architect makes a mistake, creates an unintentional software defect, i.e. bug, and ends when the bug is fixed, and the bug is no longer in existence.

What should be done after a bug is found? When a bug is found, it needs to be communicated and assigned to developers that can fix it. After the problem is resolved, fixes should be re-tested.

Additionally, determinations should be made regarding requirements, software, hardware, safety impact, etc., for regression testing to check the fixes didn't create other problems elsewhere.

If a problem-tracking system is in place, it should encapsulate these determinations. A variety of commercial, problem-tracking, management software tools are available. These tools, with the detailed input of software test engineers, will give the team complete information so developers can understand the bug, get an idea of its severity, reproduce it and fix it.