Severity and Priority

Severity means how much severe is the particular defect in the application (i.e.) how it affects the functionality of the application. Severity type is defined below :

Blocker:

1. Build fails

2. Complete application is blocked and QA cannot proceed further.

Critical:

1. Any functionality is blocked but workaround is available.

2. Issue in functionality that is important from business or demo point of view.

Major:

1. Functionality issue but QA can continue with a workaround.
2. UI issues on every browser
3. Logo missing.
4. Spelling mistakes.

Minor:

1. UI issue on least used browser.
2. Textual changes.

Trivial:

1. Errors that do not prevent or hinder functionality
2. Suggestion from QA (Improvement). If suggestions are accepted then the priority will change accordingly.

Priority means the importance and urgency to fix the defect by the developers (i.e.) which defect should be fixed first and which should be fixed in later versions.


Severity level will be set by the Testing Team and the Priority level will be set by the Development Team.

The Severity and Priority levels must vary depends upon the company and the defect tracking tool used by the company.

Few Examples:

1. High Severity & Low Priority : For example an application which generates some banking related reports weekly, monthly, quarterly & yearly by doing some calculations. If there is a fault while calculating yearly report. This is a high severity fault but low priority because this fault can be fixed in the next release as a change request.

2. High Severity & High Priority : In the above example if there is a fault while calculating weekly report. This is a high severity and high priority fault because this fault will block the functionality of the application immediately within a week. It should be fixed urgently.

3. Low Severity & High Priority : If there is a spelling mistake or content issue on the homepage of a website which has daily hits of lakhs. In this case, though this fault is not affecting the website or other functionalities but considering the status and popularity of the website in the competitive market it is a high priority fault.

4. Low Severity & Low Priority : If there is a spelling mistake on the pages which has very less hits throughout the month on any website. This fault can be considered as low severity and low priority.