There are two traditional meanings for the word “defect“. The verb “to defect” can refer to the act of leaving or quitting a team, organization, or role. The noun “defect’ refers to something faulty or erroneous in an item, procedure, or component. IN project management terminology, when the term defect is used, it is traditionally going to be used in reference more to the latter definition. Specifically, in terms of project management, a defect refers to a type of deficiency, error, gap, or imperfection of some kind that may exist in a specific component within a project, the existence of said deficiency having the resulting impact on the component to cause that component to not meet the predefined specifications or requirements for this component. As a result, it is often the responsibility of the project leaders, project management team, or the individual project team member assigned to work on that particular component, to take the action of either repairing or, if that is impossible, replacing the component.
This term is defined in the 3rd and the 4th edition of the PMBOK.