Difference Between Severity & Priority in Software Testing
Key Takeaways:
- Assigning priority and severity enhances the efficiency of testing processes.
- These classifications help identify critical errors that need immediate attention and their impact on the product.
- The blog explores the distinction between severity and priority.
Delivering high-quality products on time is every business priority. Bugs in software are inevitable, regardless of how hard you try to prevent them, but what matters the most is how you manage them. This is where the concepts of severity and priority come into play.
Severity and priority are used to indicate the impact and urgency of the bug so the team can effectively deal with it. While severity and priority may seem similar on the surface, they serve a very distinct purpose in bug tracking and resolution. Therefore, you must understand the difference between severity and priority.
Knowing the difference between the two can help you to test, manage, and fix bugs effectively. Severity determines the impact of a bug. On the other hand, priority indicates how urgent the bug needs to be addressed.
However, the difference between the two runs more profound than this. This blog will delve into what severity and priority mean, and why they are so important for successful software development. By the end, you’ll better understand the difference between severity and priority.
Why do severity and priority matter?
Every development project has limitations, whether they be costs, time, or manpower. However, it is impossible to allocate these resources efficiently without proper bug detection and prioritization. This can lead to situations where critical issues are neglected while lesser problems are prioritized.
This could result in compromises in quality, security, potential financial losses, and poor user experience. Bud severity or defect severity refers to the extent of a bug's impact on your software. The higher the impacts, the more severity; depending on the severity, you can assign priority to the bug.
This allows you to efficiently deal with bugs and defects. But before you dive into the difference between severity and priority, let’s first look at the difference between bug and defect.
Difference between a bug and a defect?
A bug is exactly what it sounds like—a little annoying bug that came out of nowhere. It’s a small, unexpected mistake, like a glitch, that could potentially lead to bigger issues, like a software crash. There are multiple reasons why a bug could occur. It could be a mistake in coding or a simple miscommunication between developers.
A simple mistake could lead to major changes in the software. Defect, on the other hand, is a broad term that encompasses any type of issue, including bugs. Basically, all bugs can be categorized as defects; however, not all defects are bugs.
Understanding the difference between these two will help you understand the nature of the issue and assign severity and priority accordingly. On that note, let’s dive into the difference between severity and priority, starting from their definition.
What is severity and priority?
Severity and priority are two of the most important attributes you can assign to a bug. Therefore it's critical that you know the difference between severity and priority. Let’s start by looking and their definition.
What is severity?
A bug’s severity, as you already know, defines the level of impact it has on your software’s performance, functionality, and stability. Severity is the measure of the bug's effect on your software’s operation capability. The severity of a bug could range from minor issues to a critical flaw. To truly understand the difference between severity and priority, you would also need to look at the priority.
What is priority?
Priority allows the software development team to create an order in which they have to deal with the bug. While severity assesses and rants bugs based on their impact, priority, on the other hand, assigns order and levels on more strategic factors.
These factors could include customer impact, SLDC, business needs, etc. To determine a bug’s priority, your development team will have both technical and impact of the defect as well as its potential effect on the development process.
This is just the basic difference between severity and priority, moving on the next section will this their difference in even more depth.
What are the different types of severity and priority?
Another point is that the difference between severity and priority can be seen in their various types. Therefore, let’s take a look at the various types of severity.
Types of Severity
- Critical severity: A bug will be assigned critical severity if it directly impacts your software’s core functionalities or compromises its security. Critical bugs can inhibit the normal function and operations of the software, and they can even lead to data loss and system crashes. Therefore, critical bugs and defects must be immediately fixed.
- Major severity: When a bug does not affect the entire software but still causes issues and inhibits significant functionality, it is labeled as major severity. While critical bugs can cause the entire system to fail, major bugs are considered when the software cannot meet the desired requirements. How these levels are assigned is a major indicator of the difference between severity and priority.
- Medium severity: Defects that have minimal impact on the over-functionality of software are called minor defects. These medium-severity bugs may result in small deviations from the intended app behavior without having a significant impact on the user experience.
- Low severity: Low-level bugs have negligible impact on the software and other superficial with no impact on the functionality. These types of defects are not urgent because they typically relate to aesthetics and enhancements.
Now that you have looked at the various types of severity, it’s also important to glance at the various types of priority. Only after looking at these will you truly understand the difference between severity and priority.
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Types of Priority
- Low: The low-priority defect is an irritant, but repair can be done after the more serious defect has been dealt with.
- Medium: Medium-priority bugs and defects can be resolved during development activities. They can remain a medium priority until a new version of the software is created.
- High priority: If a defect is a high priority, it must be fixed immediately, as it can severely affect the whole system.
Knowing all the different types of severity and priority will help you understand how the development team assigns attributes to bugs and defects. The next section will compare the two in further detail.
What is the difference between severity and priority?
Here is a simple comparison that can help you understand the difference between severity and priority.
| Parameters | Severity | Priority |
| Definition and Parameter | It is a parameter that denotes the impact of a given software. | Priority is a parameter that decides the order in which we fix a bug/defect. |
| Relation | Severity relates to the standard of quality of the software. | Priority on the other hand relates to the scheduling of defect resolution. |
| Categories | Severity has 4 categories: critical, major, medium, and low. | Meanwhile, priority has 3 categories: low, medium, and high. |
| Who decides these? | The testing engineer decides the severity level. | However, in priority, the decision is in the hands of the product managers. |
| Value | The values of severity are objective. | Conversely, the value of priority is objective. |
| Based on | Severity is based on the technical aspect of the software. | On the other hand, priority is based on the customer’s requirements. |
To further understand the difference between severity and priority let’s look at their examples in the next section.
Examples of priority and severity combination
Looking at the examples, you’ll see a stark difference between severity and priority. Therefore, without waiting any further let’s look at high-priority and low-severity example and vice versa:
Low priority high severity example:
- Using an application on an older version of Internet Explorer is a case of high severity and low priority. When accessing from an old version the page will not load properly, therefore the severity levels here are high. However, this defect is assigned low priority because very few users will use the older version so that the team can fix it later.
- Another example of high priority and low severity would be a defect in the reservation functionality of a flight operating website. Its severity is high, but priority is low because it can be scheduled for release in the next cycle.
High priority and low severity examples:
- An error in the logo can be of low severity as it does not affect the website's performance. However, it is of high priority because it represents your business and, therefore, needs to be fixed immediately.
- Another good example of high-priority and low-severity errors is a typo on the website. While incorrect spelling on your website may not impact its performance, it can significantly change how users see your website and business.
These examples should have made it clear how different severity and priority levels affect the error resolution process. However, just knowing the difference between severity and priority is not enough; you need expertise and experience to make your testing processes a success. The next section will explore how AppSierra’s testing services can help.
Why choose AppSierra’s software testing services?
AppSierra has years of experience in software testing and development. With our expertise, you won’t have to worry about bugs and defects affecting your software’s performance. Our expert can help find and resolve issues based on their severity and priority levels.
AppSierra’s software testing services help you ensure your software is flawless and has an excellent experience. Further, our expert will constantly monitor your software/application for bugs and defects and help you deal with them to minimize their effect on your software.
In addition, we can also train your team so they can understand the difference between severity and priority to deal with the issues swiftly. Here’s why our software testing services are the best choice for you:
- Extensive domain knowledge
- Customized testing solutions
- Robust test case design
- Adaptability to emerging technologies
- Comprehensive defect management
- Advance test automation
- Rigorous assurance measures
- Seamless collaboration
- Continuous monitoring and analysis
Conclusion
Testing is necessary to deliver a seamless experience and flawless software. However, the method you use to resolve errors can make a big difference in the performance of your software. Assign priority and severity can help you fix critical errors that can have a significant on your software’s performance. Knowing the difference between severity and priority will help you make better decisions when it comes to dealing with errors and defects.
Related Articles:
Different types of software bugs
Defect life cycle
Regression testing cases
Beta test