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Defects Severity and Priority _

Question:
One question on the defects that we raise. We are supposed to give a
severity and a priority to it. Now, the severity can be Major, Minor or
Trivial and the Priority can be 1, 2 or 3 (with 1 being a high priority
defect).
My question is - why do we need two parameters, severity and priority, for a
defect Can't we do only with one?

Posted by Nishant

Answer:
It depends entirely on the size of the company. Severity tells us how bad the
defect is. Priority tells us how soon it is desired to fix the problem.
In some companies, the defect reporter sets the severity and the triage team or
product management sets the priority. In a small company, or project (or
product), particularly where there aren't many defects to track, you can expect
you don't really need both since a high severity defect is also a high priority
defect. But in a large company, and particularly where there are many defects,
using both is a form of risk management.

Major would be 1 and Trivial would be 3. You can add or multiply the two values
together (there is only a small difference in the outcome) and then use the
event's risk value to determine how you should address the problem. The lower
values must be addressed and the higher values can wait.

I discovered a new method for Risk Assessment. It is based on a military

standard, MIL-STD-882. If you want a copy of the current version, search for
MIL-STD-882D using Google or Yahoo! The main area of interest is section
A.4.4.3 and its children where they indicate the Assessment of mishap risk.
They use a four-point severity rating (rather than three): Catastrophic; Critical;
Marginal; Negligible. They then use a five-point (rather than three) probability
rating: Frequent; Probable; Occasional; Remote; Improbable. Then rather than
using a mathematical calculation to determine a risk level, they use a
predefined chart.

Blocker: This bug prevents developers from testing or developing the software.
Critical: The software crashes, hangs, or causes you to lose data.
Major: A major feature is broken.
Normal: It's a bug that should be fixed.
Minor: Minor loss of function, and there's an easy work around.
Trivial: A cosmetic problem, such as a misspelled word or misaligned text.
Enhancement: Request for new feature or enhancement.

Posted by Walter Gorlitz

Answer:
Severity Levels can be defined as follow:
S1 - Urgent/Showstopper. Like system crash or error message forcing to close
the window.
Tester's ability to operate the system either totally (System Down), or
almost totally, affected. A major area of the users system is affected by the
incident and it is significant to business processes.
S2 - Medium/Workaround. Exist like when a problem is required in the specs
but tester can go on with testing.
Incident affects an area of functionality but there is a work-around which
negates impact to business process.
This is a problem that:
a) Affects a more isolated piece of functionality.
 b) Occurs only at certain boundary conditions.
c) Has a workaround (where "don't do that" might be an acceptable answer to
the user).
d) Occurs only at one or two customers. or is intermittent
S3 - Low. This is for minor problems, such as failures at extreme boundary
conditions that are unlikely to occur in normal use, or minor errors in
layout/formatting. Problems do not impact use of the product in any substantive
way. These are incidents that are cosmetic in nature and of no or very low
impact to business processes.

• Showstopper-–either a safety issue or an issue that affects a central requirement for which there is no
workaround. It prevents either use or testing of the system.
• High--an issue that affects a central requirement for which there is a workaround. Use or testing of the system
can proceed in a degraded mode.
• Medium--an issue that affects a non-central requirement for which there is no workaround. The feature cannot
be used.
• Low--an issue that affects a non-central requirement for which there is a workaround.
• Cosmetic--information is correctly shown but the appearance is wrong, such as misspelled words, wrong font,
wrong indentation, etc.