Example of Severity and Priority

1. High Severity -Low priority

Supposing, you try the wildest or the weirdest of operations in a software (say, to
be released the next day) which a normal user would not do and supposing this
renders a run -time error in the application,
the severity would be high.The priority would be low as the operations or the
steps which rendered this error by most chances will not be done by a user.
2. Low Severity -High priority
An example would be- you find a spelling mistake in the name of the website
which you are testing.
Say, the name is supposed to be Google and its spelled there as 'Gaogle'.Though,
it doesnt affect the basic functionality of the software,it needs to be corrected
before the release.
Hence, the priority is high.
3. High severity--- High Priority
A bug which is a show stopper.i.e, a bug due to which we are unable to proceed
our testing.
An example would be a run time error during the normal operation of the
software,
which would cause the application to quit abruptly.
4. Low severity --- low priority
Cosmetic bugs

Regards,
Raji

Example of Severity and Priority

Priority :- How quickly we need to fix the bug? Or How soon the bug should
get fixed?

Severity : - How much the bug is effecting the functionality of the

application?

Eg:-
(1) High Priority and Low Severity
If a company logo is not properly displayed on their website.
(2) High Priority and High Severity
Suppose you are doing online shopping and filled payment informations, but
after submitting the form, you get a message like "Order has been
cancelled."
(3) Low Priority and High Severity
If we have a typical scenario in which the application get crashed, but that
scenario exists rarely.
(4) Low Priority and Low Severity
There is a mistake like "You have registered success" instead of successfully,
success is written.

Simple example for high severity and low priority bug.

Let us consider in Yahoo login page, you are able to see username, password and
sign in button.
Let us say Sign in button is not in proper manner or the text of sign in is not able to
understand to the user such a way that he doesn't know what is the use of that
button.

Even though it is a simple text change or button is not proper place, the bug
severity will be high and priority will be low. Because if the user selects the button,
functionality will work.

Why it is high severity is , in the first look it self user will get bad impression. But
the functionality is working properly as the requirements.

High Priority but Low Severity

• While Developing a site for Pepsi, by mistake a logo sign of coke is embedded. This does
not affect functionality in any way but has high priority to be fixed.

• Any typo mistakes or glaring spelling mistakes on home page which are discovered
during UAT testing.

Low Priority but High Severity

• Incase application works perfectly for 50000 sessions but beings to crash after higher
number of sessions. This problem needs to be fixed but not immediately.
 • Any report generation not getting completed 100% - Means missing Title, Title Columns
but having proper data enlisted. We could have this fixed in the next build but missing
report columns is a High Severity defect.

Defect Severity:
Severity is the seriousness of the defect or bug in terms of functionality. Severity is
usually set by the QA team to intimate the Development team

The severity of defects is classified as follows:

Critical The problem prevents further processing and testing.

High The problem affects selected processing to a significant degree, making it

inoperable, Cause data loss, or could cause a user to make an incorrect decision or
entry.

Medium The problem affects selected processing, but has a work-around that
allows continued processing and testing. No data loss is suffered. These may be
cosmetic problems that hamper usability or divulge client-specific information.

Low The problem is cosmetic, and/or does not affect further processing and testing.

Defect Priority:
Priority tells us how soon it is desired to fix the problem. Priority is the importance
of defect in terms of customer's requirements.

Priority is set by the Business / Development Lead for the Development team to
prioritize in fixing the defects

High Must fix the problem NOW (All other defect fixing tasks take least preference).
Problem is blocking further progress in this area.

Medium Should fix the problem soon, before product release

Low Fix the problem if time permits; somewhat trivial. May be postponed
Note: There are different ways of representing the Priority and Severity based on
the project requirement.

3. Low Priority, Low Severity

Suppose your application (web) is made up of 20 pages. On one of the pages out of
the 20 which is visited very infrequently, there is a sentence with a grammatical
error. Now, even though it’s a mistake on this expensive website, users can
understand its meaning without any difficulty. This bug may go unnoticed to the
eyes of many and won't affect any functionality or the credibility of the company.

4. High Priority, High Severity

Now assume a windows-based application, a word-processor let’s say. As you open
any file to be viewed it in, it crashes. Now, you can only create new files but as you
open them, the word-processor crashes. This completely eliminates the usability of
that word-processor as you can’t come back and edit your work on it, and also
affects one of the major functionalities of the application. Thus, it’s a severe bug
and should be fixed immediately.

the tester/dev should give the priority based on severity

of the bug
Severity means: is the impact of the bug on the app.
i.e seriousness of the bug interms of the functionality.
Priority means: is how soon it should get fixed
i.e importance of the bug interms of customer

Priority wiil given by test lead with help of development

lead
Priority :- How quickly we need to fix the bug? Or How soon the bug should get
fixed?

Severity : - How much the bug is effecting the functionality of the application?

Eg:-
(1) High Priority and Low Severity
If a company logo is not properly displayed on their website.
(2) High Priority and High Severity
Suppose you are doing online shopping and filled payment informations, but after
submitting the form, you get a message like "Order has been cancelled."
(3) Low Priority and High Severity
If we have a typical scenario in which the application get crashed, but that scenario
exists rarely.
(4) Low Priority and Low Severity
There is a mistake like "You have registered success" instead of successfully,
success is written