Defect Priority & Severity

In this article, we will be covering following:

• About Priority and Severity
• Defect Severity Levels
• Defect Priority Levels
• Defect Priority and Severity Examples

Defect Priority & Severity:

Priority:

—  Importance of the bug is known as Priority/Urgency to fix a fault.

Severity:

—  Impact of the bug is known as Severity /Impact of a failure caused by  this fault.

Defect Severity Levels:

Critical / Show Stopper

— An item that prevents further testing of the product or function under test can be classified as Critical bug. No workaround is possible for such bugs. Examples of this include a missing menu option or security permission required to access a function under test.

Major / High

— A defect that does not function as expected/designed or cause other functionality to fail to meet requirements can be classified as Major Bug. The workaround can be provided for such bugs. Examples of this include inaccurate calculations; the wrong field being updated, etc.

Average / Medium

— The defects which do not conform to standards and conventions can be classified as Medium Bugs. Easy workarounds exists to achieve functionality objectives. Examples include matching visual and text links which lead to different end points.

Minor / Low

— Cosmetic defects which does not affect the functionality of the system can be classified as Minor Bugs.

Defect Priority Levels:

Low

— The defect is an irritant which should be repaired, but repair can be deferred until after more serious defect have been fixed.

Medium

— The defect should be resolved in the normal course of development activities. It can wait until a new build or version is created.

High

— The defect must be resolved as soon as possible because the defect is affecting the application or the product severely. The system cannot be used until the  repair has been done.

Priority and Severity Examples:

High Priority & High Severity:

— An error which occurs on the basic functionality of the application and will not allow the user to use the system. (Eg. A site maintaining the student details, on saving record, if it doesn’t allow to save the record then this is high priority and high severity bug.)

High Priority & Low Severity: 

— The spelling mistakes that happens on the cover page or heading or title of an application.

High Severity & Low Priority: 

— If  there is an application that crashes after multiple use of any functionality (example–save Button use 200 times then that application will crash). Means High Severity because application crashed but Low Priority because no need to debug right now you can debug it after some days.

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