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Severity and Priority in Testing?
As
usually, Tester select Severity of bugs and Project lead or
project manager selects bug priority.
Priority - Priority is the
order in which developer has to fix the bug.
Severity - Severity is how seriously the bug is impacting the application.
Severity - Severity is how seriously the bug is impacting the application.
Eg.
High Priority & High Severity: A show stopper error which occurs on the basic functionality of the application. (Eg. A site maintain 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 spell mistakes that happens
on the cover page or heading or title of an application.
High Severity & Low Priority: The application generates a show
stopper or system error, (for which there is no workaround) but on click of
link which is rarely used by the end user.
Low Priority and Low Severity: Any cosmetic or spell issues which is with in a paragraph or in the report (Not on cover page, heading, title).
Severity:
Severity is an indicator
of the impact of the defect on the software. For example,
let us assume you have a web application where the user clicks on a rarely used
link and it crashes. Then, the defect is said to be having high severity even
though the chances of the user clicking on the link is rare.
Different Severity Levels:
·
Critical: If a defect causes
the termination or complete shut-down of the application, then its severity is
“Critical”.
·
Major: If the defect
results in the termination of the system but there exist one or more
alternative methods to achieve the desired results or use the system, then the
defect is said to have the severity level “Major”.
·
Moderate: The severity of the
bug will be “Moderate” when the defect in the system does not cause the program
to terminate but produces results that are not correct or inconsistent.
·
Minor: A defect is of
severity “Minor” when the usability or functionality of the system is not
affected much but must be fixed. The results are obtained by small corrections
and there is no break-down of the system caused by the defect.
·
Cosmetic: Defects that are
related to the look and feel of the system are given the severity “Cosmetic”
What is Priority?
Priority is considered
from the customer’s point of view. Priority indicates how soon the defect needs
to be fixed by the developer. Priority is set by the product manager/customer
and it determines the time frame given to the developer to fix the bug.
Different Levels of Priority:
·
Low: A defect that can be deferred
or fixed in the later stages once the higher priority ones are fixed, as it is
not serious from the requirement point of view is of low priority.
·
Medium: A defect that needs
to be fixed during the normal course of development activity is given the status
as “Medium”. Such defects occur when a particular feature cannot be used the
way it should be because of some environmental issue, defect in the program, or
some code that has to be added. Usually, these defects are fixed and delivered
to the testing team as a part of a new release.
·
High: Those defects that need to
be fixed as soon as possible so that the testing team can continue with the
testing are said to be of high priority. The core functionality fails as a
result of such defects and the system cannot be tested or used until the defect
is fixed.
High Severity and High Priority:
You log in to your amazon.com account, add items to the cart and click “Proceed to
Checkout” button. You make the payment and the system crashes. This defect
makes the whole buying functionality unusable and so the severity is high. The
basic purpose of amazon.com is to buy and sell products and most of
the customers are affected by this. So, this defect is of high priority which
must be fixed immediately for the buying process to work.
Low Severity and High Priority:
Suppose, that in
the amazon.com website, the logo is displayed as ”amazn.com” with the
letter “o” missing. This defect does not affect the buying/selling or any other
functionality in any way. So, the severity of this defect is low. But, a
mistake in the company logo affects the brand identity and impacts the user
experience. So, the defect is of high priority.
Low Severity and Low Priority:
Suppose the tester clicks
on the “Conditions of Use” hyperlink at the bottom of the amazon.com homepage.
If there is an alignment issue in the text displayed or if there is a spelling
mistake in the content displayed, the defect is said to be of low priority
because people rarely read this page and it does not impact the user
experience. The severity is also low because the functionality of the
application is not affected.
1)High Severity and Low
priority --> application doesn't allow customer expected
Configuration.
2)High severity and High priority -->Application doesn't allow multiple users.
3)Low severity and High Priority --> No error message to prevent wrong operation.
4)Low severity and Low priority -->Error message is having complex meaning
2)High severity and High priority -->Application doesn't allow multiple users.
3)Low severity and High Priority --> No error message to prevent wrong operation.
4)Low severity and Low priority -->Error message is having complex meaning
Defect Priority and Severity
Levels
Posted ON 10 Jun
Priority and severity level of defects needed to be defined as
the development team cannot resolve all defects simultaneously. The test team
needs to indicate how soon they want to get the defect fixed, and how big the impact
on the functionality of the application under test is. Classification levels
are defined as under:
Defect priority
- High: If the priority
of defect is set to be high, it means defect is needed to be fixed
immediately. It shows that core functionality fails or test execution is
completely blocked.
- Medium: If the
priority is set to be medium then it means fix the defect soon. It shows
that important functionality fails but we don’t need to test it right now
and we have a workaround.
- Low: If the
priority of defect is set to be low then it means don’t fix this defect
before the high and medium defects are fixed but don’t forget this defect.
Defect priority indicates the impact on the test team or test
planning. If the defect blocks or greatly slows down test execution, you might
want to select the highest grade for the defect priority.
Defect severity
- Critical: If the
severity status is defined as critical then it means a core functionality
returns completely invalid results or doesn’t work at all.
- Important: If the
severity status is defined as important then it means this defect has
impact on basic functionality.
- Useful: If the
severity status is defined as useful then it means there is impact on the
business, but only in a very few cases.
- Nice
to have: If
the status of severity is defined as nice to have then it means the impact
on the business is minor. Any user interface defect not complicating the
functionality often gets this severity grade.
Defect severity indicates the impact on the business of the client.
If important functionality is blocked or if that functionality functions
incorrectly, the test engineer mostly selects the highest defect severity.
It is clear that priority and severity qualifiers may differ
which is depending on companies or projects but basically their value remains
the same. It is depending on test engineer that how to assign defect priority
and severity after measuring impact of each defect. Nevertheless he should
always decide with care as the defect resolution time depends on this.
Severity
basically means the degree of impact a bug or defect has on the functionality
of the said application or software. Higher severity of the bug means the
higher its potential to affect the working of an application in a negative
manner. Mostly, the Quality Assurance Engineer determines the severity of a
bug.
What Exactly is Meant by Priority in Simple Terms
Priority is nothing but the order in which the said bugs or defects need
to be addressed to. Higher priority of a bug means that it needs urgent attention
regardless of its severity. Consider this - A bug might be
of low severity but if assigned a high priority, then it has to be fixed more
sooner than a bug with a higher severity.
Categorization of Types of Severity and Priority
SEVERITY
Critical : This kind of bug or defect is the one which is leading towards
complete shutdown of the process that means a tester is not able to proceed
further while doing his work.
Major : It
is as serious as the critical one, but the only difference is that in
this kind of defect certain parts of the system still works while the whole
system collapses.
Medium :
Some expected behaviour can be detected while running the application but still
the application is functional. However, the app will not respond as per the
expectations.
Low : It
is a minor bug which affects the system and the functionality to an extent
which does not hampers its functionality but impacts negatively in regard to
the reputation of the web or mobile application in question. It’s not going to
result in the breakdown of the system.
PRIORITY
High : High
priority means that the defect should be resolved as soon as possible as it's
affecting the system severely and has made the system come to a complete
shutdown.
Medium : It
requires for the defect to be resolved as soon as you get time to address the
concerned bug while the application development is also been carried out
simultaneously. However, it does not allow developers to sit back and relax if
this level of fault has occurred.
Low : There
is not an urgent requirement of fixing these kind of bugs. However, it does not
mean that you are free to let them be, as it's not affecting the system in a
critical manner. It only gives you the luxury to fix these kind of errors
whenever you get time after fixing the major ones.
Let’s Make It Simpler With The Help of These Practical Examples
High Severity Low Priority
Logo of the Company : Suppose, a company’s logo colour is showing different or
there has been an incorrect spelling of the company’s name in the URL found of
what it should be.That means it’s a case of high severity because the company’s
reputation and accessibility has been affected in a severe manner. Why Severe ?
Because, if the company URL is incorrect, that means, whenever people will type
the URL in their browser’s address bar, the site will not open. Likewise,
colour fault in the logo can create dissimilarities of the site’s appearance at
different places on the web which leads to negative impact on the reputation of
the site.
High Severity High Priority
Submit Button on the Login Page not working or not getting
Displayed : You may have easily
understood about why it's high on both severity and priority. If one is unable
to login on your site, then what’s the use of your site and added is the bad
response it will generate among the users that will eventually make users leave
your site promptly.
Low Severity High Priority
Kick Start not working in a Bike but Self Start Does : High Priority because Self Start could stop
to work at any time as self start is more prone to defects than the manual Kick
Start. Low Severity because self start is still working and your bike is still
functional.
Low Severity Low Priority
A Few Spelling Mistakes In the Text of Home Screen : Both severity and priority are low because
it’s not affecting much the functionality of the site and the spellings can be
corrected any time with a lot of ease in the free time.
Hope this blog has cleared all the confusions and misconceptions
with regard to the ever confusing topic - “Difference between Severity and
Priority”.
severity=
seriusness
Priority=Demand
Priority
and Severity Examples
Can some one
give the best example for the following scenario's
1. High Priority and high severity
2. High Priority and low severity
3. High severity and low priority
4. low severity and low priority
1. High Priority and high severity
2. High Priority and low severity
3. High severity and low priority
4. low severity and low priority
Those
concept use for defect tracking and resolution:
severity-vs-priority-testing
Both Severity and
Priority are attributes of a defect and should be provided in the bug report.
This information is used to determine how quickly a bug should be fixed.
Severity of a defect is
related to how severe a bug is. Usually the severity is defined in terms of
financial loss, damage to environment, company’s reputation and loss of life.
Priority of a defect is
related to how quickly a bug should be fixed and deployed to live servers. When
a defect is of high severity, most likely it will also have a high priority.
Likewise, a low severity defect will normally have a low priority as well.
Although it is
recommended to provide both Severity and Priority when submitting a defect
report, many companies will use just one, normally priority.
In the bug report,
Severity and Priority are normally filled in by the person writing the bug
report, but should be reviewed by the whole team.
High Severity – High
Priority bug
This is when major path
through the application is broken, for example, on an eCommerce website, every
customers get error message on the booking form and cannot place orders, or the
product page throws a Error 500 response.
High Severity – Low
Priority bug
This happens when the
bug causes major problems, but it only happens in very rare conditions or
situations, for example, customers who use very old browsers cannot continue
with their purchase of a product. Because the number of customers with very old
browsers is very low, it is not a high priority to fix the issue.
High Priority – Low
Severity bug
This could happen when,
for example, the logo or name of the company is not displayed on the website.
It is important to fix the issue as soon as possible, although it may not cause
a lot of damage.
Low Priority – Low
Severity bug
For cases where the bug
doesn’t cause disaster and only affects very small number of customers, both
Severity and Priority are assigned low, for example, the privacy policy page
take a long time to load. Not many people view the privacy policy page and slow
loading doesn’t affect the customers much.
The
above are just examples. It is the team who should decide the Severity and
Priority for each bug.
What is Severity?
Bug/Defect severity can be defined as the impact of the bug on
the application. It can be Critical, Major or Minor. In simple words, how
much effect will be there on the system because of a particular defect
What are the types of Severity?
Severity can be categorized into three types:
As mentioned above the type of severity are categorized as
Critical, Major, and Minor
Let’s see how can we segregate a bug into these types:
Critical:
A critical severity issue is an issue where a large piece of
functionality or major system component is completely broken and there is no
workaround to move further.
For example, Due to a bug in one module, we cannot test the other modules because that blocker bug has blocked the other modules. Bugs which affects the customers business are considered as critical
For example, Due to a bug in one module, we cannot test the other modules because that blocker bug has blocked the other modules. Bugs which affects the customers business are considered as critical
Major:
A major severity issue is an issue where a large piece of
functionality or major system component is completely broken and there is a
workaround to move further.
Minor:
A minor severity issue is an issue that imposes some loss of functionality,
but for which there is an acceptable & easily reproducible workaround.
For example, font family or font size or color or spelling issue
Trivial:
A trivial severity defect is a defect which is related to
the enhancement of the system
What is Priority?
Defect priority can be defined as an impact of the bug on the
customers business. Main focus on how soon the defect should be fixed. It gives
the order in which a defect should be resolved. Developers decide which defect
they should take up next based on the priority. It can be High, Medium or Low.
Most of the times the priority status is set based on the
customer requirement.
What are the types of Priority?
Priority can be categorized into three types:
As mentioned above the type of severity are categorized as High,
Medium, and Low
Let’s see how can we segregate a bug into these types:
High:
A high priority issue is an issue which has a high impact on the
customers business or an issue which affects the system severely and the system
cannot be used until the issue was fixed. These kinds of issues must be fixed
immediately. Most of the cases as per the user perspective, the priority of the
issue is set to high priority even though the severity of the issue is minor.
Medium:
Issues which can be released in the next build comes under
medium priority. Such issues can be resolved along with other development
activities.
Low:
An issue which has no impact on the customer business comes
under low priority.
Some important scenarios which are asked in the interviews on
Severity and Priority:
High Priority & High Severity:
A critical issue where a large piece of functionality or major
system component is completely broken.
For example,
1. Submit button is not working on a login page and customers are unable to login to the application
2. On a bank website, an error message pops up when a customer clicks on transfer money button.
3. Application throws an error 500 response when a user tries to do some action.
500 Status Codes:
The server has problems in processing the request and these are mainly server errors and not with the request.
For example,
1. Submit button is not working on a login page and customers are unable to login to the application
2. On a bank website, an error message pops up when a customer clicks on transfer money button.
3. Application throws an error 500 response when a user tries to do some action.
500 Status Codes:
The server has problems in processing the request and these are mainly server errors and not with the request.
These kinds of showstoppers come under High Priority and High
Severity.
There won’t be any workaround and the user can’t do the further process.
There won’t be any workaround and the user can’t do the further process.
Low Priority & High Severity:
An issue which won’t affects customers business but it has a big
impact in terms of functionality.
For example,
1. Crash in some functionality which is going to deliver after couple of releases
2. There is a crash in an application whenever a user enters 4 digits in the age field which accepts max 3 digits.
For example,
1. Crash in some functionality which is going to deliver after couple of releases
2. There is a crash in an application whenever a user enters 4 digits in the age field which accepts max 3 digits.
High Priority & Low Severity:
A minor issue that imposes some loss of functionality, but for
which there is an acceptable & easily reproducible workaround. Testing can
proceed without interruption but it affects customers reputation.
For example,
1. Spelling mistake of a company name on the homepage
2. Company logo or tagline issues
1. Spelling mistake of a company name on the homepage
2. Company logo or tagline issues
It is important to fix the issue as soon as possible, although
it may not cause a lot of damage.
Low Priority & Low Severity:
A minor issue that imposes some loss of functionality, but for
which there is an acceptable & easily reproducible workaround. Testing can
proceed without interruption.
For example,
1. FAQ page takes a long time to load.
2. Font family or font size or color or spelling issue in the application or reports (Spelling mistake of company name on the home page won’t come under this Low Priority and Low
Severity)
For example,
1. FAQ page takes a long time to load.
2. Font family or font size or color or spelling issue in the application or reports (Spelling mistake of company name on the home page won’t come under this Low Priority and Low
Severity)
These kinds of issues won’t bother the customers much.
Some more points:
1. The development team takes up the high priority defects first rather than of high severity.
2. Generally,
severity is assigned by Tester / Test Lead & priority is assigned by
Developer/Team Lead/Project Lead.
Final Words:
The above are just examples. Selection of severity and priority
may vary depends on project and organization. In Gmail, composing an email is
main functionality, whereas composing an email feature in a banking (email
option to send emails internally) application is not the main functionality.
