Severity & Priority Of Defects

During Test Execution when the tester finds the defect and logs it in any Defect Logging tool like JIRA, to submit for the developers to work on, a tester needs to decide the Priority and Severity based on the defect criticality and complexity so that a developer can deal accordingly.

So, in this article we will learn what is severity and priority of defects.

Severity :

Severity of Defect indicates that to what degree a particular defect has its impact on the Software/application. It means that, severity is seriousness of defect with respect to functionality.

Severity is categorized in different categories depending on the impact of the defect on the application:

• Critical : A defect that hampers the entire application and blocks the user to proceed or use the application, it is considered as critical defect.
  For example - Considering the UI of the application, if the Login Screen of the application hangs and does not allow the user to login and proceed further.

• Major : A defect is considered as major if the Major/ important feature of an application is not working as expected or intended to perform. Any significant feature implemented in an application is working completely different from it’s expected behaviour, then the defect for this will be considered as Major.
  For example - While doing Online shopping, the user is unable to add products to the cart using Add to Cart feature.

• Minor/Moderate : Any feature that is implemented and working differently from the expected behaviour but its impacts are tolerable and would not harm the application too much, and the overall functionality of the application is not affected, such defect is considered as Minor. A minor defect can wait to be resolved for some time, or it can be tackled in the next release of the application.
  For example - On the `Terms and Condition page`, one of the links is not working.

• Low : Any defect that does not harm the functionality but is a valid defect and needs to be corrected. Low bugs like spelling mistakes and slight misalignment of fonts fall in this category.
  For example - A few spelling mistakes on a web page.

Priority :

Priority is the urgency of the defect to be fixed. It refers to the order in which defects need to be fixed, keeping in mind it’s severity and business needs.

• High : Any defect that needs immediate attention and needs to be fixed as soon as possible (max 24 hours). Defects that largely impact the end customers and business comes under this category. When the entire application is blocked, and testers cannot proceed with further software testing is due to these high priority issues.

• Medium : Defects that can wait to get fixed as they are not affecting the application’s major functionality and do not hamper the business and customer falls in this category.

• Low : Defects filed for changes in the existing design to enhance the customer experience are considered Low priority defects. These defects need less attention, and hence they are considered at last when all the other priority defects have been fixed.