March 3, 2009

What is the difference between Priority and Severity?

The terms Priority and Severity are used in Bug Tracking to share the importance of a bug among the team and to fix it.

Severity
1. The Severity status is used to explain how badly the deviation is affecting the build.
2. The severity type is defined by the tester based on the written test cases and functionality.

Ex : If an application or a 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 and priority is low.

Priority
1. 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.
2. The priority status is set based on the customer requirements.

Ex : If the company name is misspelled in the home page of a website, then the priority is high and the severity is low to fix it.


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22 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great answer, explained in a simple way with examples.

7:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

examples make it easy to understand and now I know the difference.

7:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very nice short description which explains the difference very well.
Thanks

2:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Its good :)

Thanks!

10:06 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

very nice answer in a simple language with great example

5:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for easy explanation

11:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wonderful explanation..i just hope interviewers ask me d same question next time..n i m ready wid d perfect answer!

9:46 PM  
Blogger sri said...

Glad, you explained it very clearly in simple terms.

4:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Super simple examples

4:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Really short and sweet answer.

12:32 PM  
Anonymous nidhi said...

i think the priority is given by project lead and the severity by tester.
can u tell me.

11:06 PM  
Anonymous apu said...

nice exp

3:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

now i understood the diff...thank u

10:11 PM  
Anonymous Malar said...

clear explanation

10:49 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

excellent my dear keep it up....

10:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Truly a bit confusing question, but stated well with great examples.

Thanks

Sujatha

10:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanx a lot

11:29 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

One important aspect about agile software development is the need to reduce the fear of change. An important part of this is to reduce the fear that introducing a change will break something that we already got to work. To combat this fear, we need to be able to run regression tests, and run them fast, frequently and cheaply. This has many implications on how we design and build our tests and test harnesses, how we build our software so it's easy to test, etc.

Another and not entirely unrelated purpose of agile testing is to detect bugs in the process - rather than to detect bugs in the product. Each bug in the product was in theory introduced owing to a flaw in the process, or a flaw in the execution of the process, etc. To make a good stimulus for improving process, the test failures must be regarded as an opportunity to learn how to do things better. It is a big help if the test detects the bug in a very short time (within minutes) of its introduction, while the person or people concerned still remember what they were thinking when they did what they did. It follows that for a team really committed to improving, each and every bug should be analyzed immediately to find out how it came about.

For further reading you can check
What is Agile Software Testing?

9:47 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Here is one more example on this:Test cases for input box which accepts numbers between 1 and 100 using Boundary value analysis:Test cases with test data exactly as the input boundaries of input domain i.e. values 1 and 100 in our case.Test data with values just below the extreme edges of input domains i.e. values 0 and 99.Test data with values just above the extreme edges of input domain i.e. values 2 and 101.

For more examples visit 5 Boundary Value Analysis Examples

Thanks Dav

9:47 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Writing test cases is one of the major and most important activities which any tester performs during the entire testing cycle. The approach for writing good test cases will be to identify, define and analyse the requirements.
When you begin writing the test cases, there are few steps which you need to follow to ensure that you are writing good test cases

If you are interested then also go through the following article to check a step by step approach to write a good test case:

How to write a good test case?

9:48 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Regression Testing is the execution of all or a select set of test cases which have passed on the previous build or release of the application under test in order to validate that the original features and functions are still working as they were previously. These tests normally will not have already been executed against the current build or release as normally only the new features and functions are tested prior to regression testing.

Retesting is the execution of one or a set of test cases which previously failed due to a suspected defect in the software which now is documented as being remedied.

Source: What is the difference between Regression Testing vs Retest?

9:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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1:40 PM  

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