Severity : The importance of reporting defect with respect to functionality
Who raises the Severity ?
Quality Assurance team will raise the Severity.
Critical : This defect indicates , testing cannot be taken further.
Major : Highly severe defect, only certain parts of system are functional.
Medium : Undesirable behavior, however functionalities will still be working.
Low : System break down will not happen.
Priority : The importance of defect with respect to customer.
High : This has to be fixed immediately without fixing defect, the system cannot be used.
Medium : This defect also needs to be fixed, however it can be fixed in later releases.
Low : The defect will have the least priority, it can be fixed once the major defects have been addressed.
Different Scenarios Related to Severity and Priority :
Example 1 : In General
Low Priority and Low Severity : Any cosmetic or spelling mistake which is within a Sentence.
High Priority and Low Severity : Any spelling mistake that will happen on the Headings or title of an application.
Low Priority and high Severity : An error which occurs on the functionality of the application, for which there is no workaround.
High Priority and High Severity : An error which occurs on the basic functionality of the application and will not allow the user to use the system.
Example 2 : Error 500 response.
Low Priority and Low Severity : The bug doesnot cause disaster and only few customers are impacted. Like privacy policy and conditions page load slowly.
High Priority and Low Severity : The company logo is not displayed on the website. It will be fixed as soon as possible. Although the functionality is not going to impact more.
Low Priority and high Severity : users using outdated versions of browsers will not be able to buy a product .
High Priority and High Severity : Application is completely down, for flight reservation system if the booking button doesnot work then the user will not be able to navigate to the booking api and page showing 500 error response.
Example 3 : Bank ATM Withdrawal
Low Priority and Low Severity : Description of new offers in set of sentences, where within a sentence there is a spelling mistake.
High Priority and Low Severity : Any errors in the heading of the description.
Low Priority and high Severity : When trying to withdraw the amount, the user is not able to navigate to the withdrawal page.
High Priority and High Severity : User is not able to login to the application using correct pin number.