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Priority and Severity : Expanded

 

Levels of Priority with Examples


  1. Critical Priority
    These are non-negotiable tests—if these fail, the whole system or application may be unusable or face severe consequences.
    Example: In a hospital management system, a test case that verifies the emergency patient's data is correctly saved and retrievable is critical. Failure could directly impact patient safety.
  2. High Priority
    These test essential features required for primary business operations.
    Example: In an e-commerce site, processing a payment or placing an order is high priority—customers can't use the system effectively without it.
  3. Medium Priority
    These relate to important but non-essential functionality.
    Example: In the same e-commerce platform, applying a coupon code is useful, but users can still complete purchases without it.
  4. Low Priority
    These test optional or cosmetic features.
    Example: Animations or theme customizations on the homepage—nice to have, but won’t interrupt the main workflow if broken.

This structure helps QA teams focus on the most impactful areas first—especially during tight release schedules or rapid development cycles.

While priority determines when a test should be executed, severity reflects how bad a defect or failure is from a functional or business perspective. Think of severity as the impact on the system, regardless of whether the issue needs to be fixed urgently or not.

Levels of Severity with Examples


  1. Critical Severity
    A defect that causes a system crash or complete failure, with no workaround.
    Example: In an airline booking system, if the server crashes while processing bookings, stopping all operations—that’s critical.
  2. High Severity
    Major functionality is broken, but the system still runs. No workaround exists.
    Example: On a banking app, users can’t log in, but the app loads and displays the login page—it just never accepts credentials.
  3. Medium Severity
    A defect causes some functionality to behave incorrectly, but a workaround exists.
    Example: In a shopping website, the "Add to Wishlist" button doesn’t work, but users can still add items to their cart and purchase them.
  4. Low Severity
    Minor defects that don't affect the main functionality—usually cosmetic or UI glitches.
    Example: A typo in a success message like "Your payment was successful."

👥 Summary

  • Severity = Impact (How much it breaks)
  • Priority = Urgency (How soon we fix it)

A low severity bug (like that typo) might still have high priority if it's customer-facing and affects brand image. Likewise, a critical severity bug in a rarely used feature could be low priority if it doesn’t impact current release goals.

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