HIGH SEVERITY with LOW PRIORITY bug desciption Go thru the following description,

If u need to display INSURANCE calculations lets say Employee Insurance Info Report In that REPORT u have to display all employees insurance calculations based on their benfits assigned for the financial year 2010. And management told you that u should display all correct calculation in the report before next month . now you got bug in REPORTS that shows wrong calculations and display insurance based on year 2009 i.e. last year.(Expected : It should display calculations based on 2010 employee benefits) NOW, in this case u can describe this bug as a Hight serverity bug because this would affect on insurance calculations at the time of delevery and Financial Audit but now, You give LOW PRORITY to resolve this issue (depends on your work status also :) ) because this bug occurs in REPORTS only not in your applications pages from where you provides inputs for new calculations and all these pages shows correct insurance calculations. so bug is in only reports and as per managemnet told you to show correct reports before the next months. i.e. you have more than one month in hand to resolve the issuee. ( and prior to resolve this you have to schedule time for resolve high priorty issues also ) So in this case you can give Low Prioriy for this high severity bug :)

so in this scenario there is chances to give HIGH SEVERITY with LOW PRIORITY bug desciption Re: 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.

Re: Example of Severity and Priority Hi, Severity: Describes the bug in terms of functionality. Priority: Describes the bug in terms of customer.

few examples: High Severity and Low Priority -> Application doesn't allow customer expected configuration. High Severity and High Priority -> Application doesn't allow multiple user's. Low Severity and High Priority -> No error message to prevent wrong operation. Low Severity and low Priority -> Error message is having complex meaning. Defect Severity determines the defect's effect on the application where as Defect Priority determines the defect urgency of repair. Severity is given by Testers and Priority by Developers 1. High Severity & Low Priority : For example an application which generates some banking related reports weekly, monthly, quarterly & yearly by doing some calculations. If there is a fault while calculating yearly report. This is a high severity fault but low priority because this fault can be fixed in the next release as a change request. 2. High Severity & High Priority : In the above example if there is a fault while calculating weekly report. This is a high severity and high priority fault because this fault will block the functionality of the application immediately within a week. It should be fixed urgently. 3. Low Severity & High Priority : If there is a spelling mistake or content issue on the homepage of a website which has daily hits of lakhs. In this case, though this fault is not affecting the website or other functionalities but considering the status and popularity of the website in the competitive market it is a high priority fault.

4. Low Severity & Low Priority : If there is a spelling mistake on the pages which has very less hits throughout the month on any website. This fault can be considered as low severity and low priority.

High severity and high priority = a server error page appears when the login button is clicked on the login screen of a companys web app the functionality of the button is completely broken, therefore it is a severe defect. The high priority is down to the fact that users cannot log in to the web app at all, which affects the business immensely. Low severity and high priority = a companys logo image doesnt appear properly on their web application the bug has not affect the operability of the web app in any way. It is purely a cosmetic bug, but has an urgency to be fixed due to it being the companys logo. High severity and low priority = this could be a broken link that causes a server error page to be displayed, but the link might be on a screen that is unimportant, or the link might only be very rarely clicked by a user. Low severity and low priority = this might be a spelling issue thats within a large paragraph of text that is rarely read by the users.

what is difference between Priority and Severity?

In the market various Software management/bug tracking system are available. These powerful tools allow you to enter the important information of bug which helps to convey the exact steps of the bug & which provide the complete information to team. So developer can get an exact idea of its Severity. In the Bug Tracking the terms Priority and Severity are used to share the importance of a bug among the team and to fix it accordingly. Priority means how fast it has to be fixed. Normally talking about this, High Severity bug are marked as High Priority bugs & its should be resolved as early as possible, but this case is not all the time. There can be different exceptions to this rule and depending on the nature of the application it can be change from company to company. Lets take a example to the Priority: e.g. To deal with all issues present what issues to be consider on first based on its urgency or importance on application under test. Adding this field in while reporting bug will help analyzing theBug Report. As this is common question ask in the Software Testing Interview Questions.

Priority:

Priority means how fast it has to be fixed. Priority is related to scheduling to resolve the problem. Severity means how severe it is affecting the functionality. Is largely related to Business or Marketing aspect. It is a pointer towards the importance of the bug. The priority status is set based on the customer requirements. Is related to technical aspect of the product. It reflects on how bad the bug is for the system. Priority means how urgently the issue can be fixed. Product manager is to decide the Priority to fix a bug. Based on Project Priorities the product fixes are done. The Priority status is set by the tester to the developer mentioning the time frame to fix a defect. If High priority is mentioned then the developer has to fix it at the earliest.

Severity:

It is totally related to the quality standard or devotion to standard. Severity means how severe it is affecting the functionality. Severity is associated with standards. The severity type is defined by the tester based on the written test cases and functionality. Is related to technical aspect of the product. It reflects on how bad the bug is for the system. It is totally related to the quality standard or devotion to standard. Severity means how big functionality is affecting of the product. The Test Engineer can decide the severity level of the bug. Based on Bug Severity the product fixes are done. Also we can say The Severity status is used to explain how badly the deviation is affecting the build.

The severity is assigned by tester. Based on seriousness of the bug severity is assigned to defect. It can be divided into four categories: Show Stopper: 4 Cannot able to test application further. Major Defect: 3 Major functionality not working but able to test application. Minor Defect: 2 Bug in Functionality but in the sub module or one under the other module. Cosmetic: 1 Issues in location of the object or the look and feel issue. Let discuss few examples of Priority & Severity from High to Low:
High Priority & High Severity:

1. All show stopper bugs would be added under this category (I mean to say tester should log Severity as High, to set up Priority as High is Project

managers call), means bug due to which tester is not able to continue with the Software Testing, Blocker Bugs. 2. Lets take an example of High Priority & High Severity, Upon login to system Run time error displayed on the page, so due to which tester is not able to proceed the testing further.
High Priority & Low Severity:

1. On the home page of the companys web site spelling mistake in the name of the company is surely a High Priority issue. In terms of functionality it is not breaking anything so we can mark as Low Severity, but making bad impact on the reputation of company site. So it highest priority to fix this.
Low Priority & High Severity:

1. The download Quarterly statement is not generating correctly from the website & user is already entered in quarter in last month. So we can say such bugs as High Severity, this is bugs occurring while generating quarterly report. We have time to fix the bug as report is generated at the end of the quarter so priority to fix the bug is Low. 2. System is crashing in the one of the corner scenario, it is impacting major functionality of system so the Severity of the defect is high but as it is corner scenario so many of the user not seeing this page we can mark it as Low Priority by project manager since many other important bugs are likely to fix before doing high priority bugs because high priority bugs are can be visible to client or end user first.
Low Priority & Low Severity:

1. Spelling mistake in the confirmation error message like You have registered success instead of successfully, success is written. 2. Developer is missed remove cryptic debug information shortcut key which is used developer while developing he application, if you pressing the key combination LEFT_ALT+LEFT_CTRL+RIGHT_CTRL+RIGHT_ALT+F5+F10 for 1 mins (funny na).
1) 2) Severity Priority

1) Severity: It is the extent to which the defect can affect the software. In other words it defines the impact that a given defect has on the system. For example: If an application or web page crashes when a remote link is clicked, in this case clicking the remote link by an user is rare but the impact of application crashing is severe. So the severity is high but priority is low. Severity can be of following types:

Critical: The defect that results in the termination of the complete system or one or more component of the system and causes extensive corruption of the data. The failed function is unusable and there is no acceptable alternative method to achieve the required results then the severity will be stated as critical.

Major: The defect that results in the termination of the complete system or one or more component of the system and causes extensive corruption of the data. The failed function is unusable but there exists an acceptable alternative method to achieve the required results then the severity will be stated as major.

Moderate: The defect that does not result in the termination, but causes the system to produce incorrect, incomplete or inconsistent results then the severity will be stated as moderate. Minor: The defect that does not result in the termination and does not damage the usability of the system and the desired results can be easily obtained by working around the defects then the severity is stated as minor.

Cosmetic: The defect that is related to the enhancement of the system where the changes are related to the look and field of the application then the severity is stated as cosmetic.

2) Priority: Priority defines the order in which we should resolve a defect. Should we fix it now, or can it wait? This priority status is set by the tester to the developer mentioning the time frame to fix the defect. If high priority is mentioned then the developer has to fix it at the earliest. The priority status is set based on the customer requirements.For example: If the company name is misspelled in the home page of the website, then the priority is high and severity is low to fix it. Priority can be of following types:

Low: The defect is an irritant which should be repaired, but repair can be deferred until after more serious defect have been fixed. Medium: The defect should be resolved in the normal course of development activities. It can wait until a new build or version is created. High: The defect must be resolved as soon as possible because the defect is affecting the application or the product severely. The system cannot be used until the repair has been done.

Few very important scenarios related to the severity and priority which are asked during the interview: High Priority & High Severity: An error which occurs on the basic functionality of the application and will not allow the user to use the system. (Eg. A site maintaining the student details, on saving record if it, doesnt allow to save the record then this is high priority and high severity bug.) High Priority & Low Severity: The spelling mistakes that happens on the cover page or heading or title of an application. High Severity & Low Priority: An error which occurs on the functionality of the application (for which there is no workaround) and will not allow the user to use the system but on click of link which is rarely used by the end user.

Severity vs Priority in Software Testing

Severity: Severity determines the defect's effect on the application. Severity is given by Testers Priority: Determines the defect urgency of repair. Priority is given by Test lead or project manager

1. High Severity and Low Priority : For example an application which generates some banking related reports weekly, monthly, quarterly & yearly by doing some calculations. If there is a fault while calculating yearly report. This is a high severity fault but low priority because this fault can be fixed in the next release as a change request.

2. High Severity and High Priority : In the above example if there is a fault while calculating weekly report. This is a high severity and high priority fault because this fault will block the functionality of the application immediately within a week. It should be fixed urgently.

3. Low Severity and High Priority : If there is a spelling mistake or content issue on the homepage of a website which has daily hits of lakhs. In this case, though this fault is not affecting the website or other functionalities but considering the status and popularity of the website in the competitive market it is a high priority fault.

4. Low Severity and Low Priority : If there is a spelling mistake on the pages which has very less hits throughout the month on any website. This fault can be considered as low severity and low priority. Priority is used to organize the work. The field only takes meaning when owner of the bug P1 Fix in next build P2 Fix as soon as possible P3 Fix before next release P4 Fix it time allow P5 Unlikely to be fixed Default priority for new defects is set at P3