Did you know universal examples of defects' severity and priority?

Defects are integral part of software development lifecycle and key driver in improving overall quality of software before its shipped to customers.

Having said that, due to one or other reason(s), all defects aren't fixed by the release date of the application and only selected ones are picked-up. To ensure that right defects are chosen for fixing, it's required that they are assigned with appropriate severity and priority. Based on availability of time and capacity, issues are picked up as per their priority order i.e high priority defects are fixed first followed by medium priority and then low priority.

Many a times, important defects are missed for fixing in situations where severities and priorities aren't correctly assigned to them as it's not feasible to read every defect when there is significant backlog and they have to be filtered based on priorities assigned.

While onus of appropriate assignment of severities and priorities is on entire team, it's primarily lies w/ test engineer(s) who're reporting them. Testers should be absolutely clear about definitions of severity and priority as well as impact that they have in overall quality of application.

Off late it has been observed, may be just by myself, that testers don't have have clear understanding about severities and priorities and hence they aren't being assigned appropriately to defects reported. While existing team members can be trained/guided, it's important to assess understanding of candidates during hiring process.

While seeking examples of defects having high severity/low priority or low severity/high priority, interestingly, there are only 2 examples are shared by majority of them and here they are:

High Severity & Low Priority - Clicking on link is not performing required operation and it's not used by many users.

Low Severity & High Priority - There is spelling mistake in name of company on site or incorrect company logo is being shown.

Taking it further, if candidates are asked for different examples then they really struggle. Also, when candidates are asked to share definition of severity and priority fields, then they usually end of mixing their purposes. One other cause is just having one of either of these fields and engineering team tries to overload same to try achieving objective of both.

Here are definitions of severity and priority:

Severity - Severity is defined as impact of a defect on the functionality of software.

Priority - Priority defines as how soon defect should be fixed.

So, it's important that testers are well versed and clear about severity and priority so that they not only report defects but play important role in getting them fixed as early as possible.

Do you also have similar observation(s) and if yes then share your views by commenting on this article and how you have addressed it?

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