Severity indicates the degree of damage defects impact to quality.Priority indicates the order to fix defects.
Severity and priority as two crucial aspects to defects; have some distinctions and connections.
In general, high severity often with high priority, but that is not exactly one-to-one correspondence…
Severity Classification
Severity is more from the user view to be defined.
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Critical
Errors result in complete failure.
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Major
Major defects result in system collapses or crashes, yet a few functionalities that remain workable.
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Minor
Defects have an impact on the non-critical path of the product or minor functions. It can cause some malfunction but will still keep the software up and running.
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Trivial
Errors do not cause malfunctions by impacting any data or function, but still have space to improve.
Priority Classification
Priority is more from the internal view, such as the product designer or project manager, to be defined.
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Urgent
Must be fixed immediately / in the next build.
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High
Must be fixed in any of the upcoming builds but should be included in the release.
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Medium
May be fixed after the release / in the next release.
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Low
May or may not be fixed at all.
Different companies will define the severity and priority by themselves based on the real situation for their business.