Difference between Severity & Priority?

Categories >> Software >> Testing >> Manual Testing
Suggest New Category

Question Posted / sushma

14 Answers
41891 Views
IBM, I also Faced
E-Mail Answers

Answers were Sorted based on User's Feedback

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / karan sharma

I can differenciate with example
suppose we identify two bugs
1. The client logo is not appearing on the web site but the
site is working fine... in this case the severity is low but
the priority is high because from company's reputation it is
most imp to resolve. After all the reputation wins more
clients and projects and hence increases revinue

2. The Qaurterly statement event is not triggering from the
website and we are just at the begining of the new quarter
after a new release.
In this case the Severity is High but priority cauld be low
becase we have time till the quarter ends to fix the bug

So the botemline is that in the priority v/s severity
matrix the priority is completely bussiness impact driven
and the severity is completely technical impact driven. :)

Hope this helps !!

Is This Answer Correct ?

49 Yes

1 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / shiva.annam

Severity is seriousness of the bug
where
Priority is How fast the bug should be rectified?

Is This Answer Correct ?

24 Yes

2 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / sushma

Severity: Impact of the defect on the Application. Assigned
by Testers.

Priority:Impact of the defect w.r.t users.
: How fast we have to solve the defect.

Is This Answer Correct ?

22 Yes

6 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / padmaja

severity describes seriousness of the defect with respect
to functionality
where
priority describes importance of defect to solve with
respect to customer.

Is This Answer Correct ?

17 Yes

1 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / pooja

the diff will be more clear if u go for an example of Low
priority high severity and high priority low severity
1. low p high s :- suppose we have a link on our site that
is visited very rarely may be in once 1000 times on which
our system crashed that is High Severe because whole system
crashes but Low priority because Link is very rare.....
2. misspelled company name or missing logo from front page
have no impact on s/w functionality but having a worst
impact on company's goodwill so this is this case of high
Priority but Low severity........
i hope u will understand...

Is This Answer Correct ?

11 Yes

1 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / muditpurwar

Severit: how bad the defect and its reflect or imapact on
the s/w application with respect to the customer
requirement and on the user.severity given by the test
engineer.

Priority: How important the bug when it is to fix.It
shopuld be fixed on the basis of importancy of requirement.
Priority of the defect decide by the Developement team
member.

Is This Answer Correct ?

7 Yes

1 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / rupeshboyalla

Severity:Severity indicates the criticality of the
failure[Functional or procedure failure of the complete
system with no work around, or defects that are urgent
customer care driver].

Priority: The order in which the defect should be fixed.

Is This Answer Correct ?

4 Yes

0 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / sm

Severity is in terms of application under test where as
priority is in terms of customer requirements..

Is This Answer Correct ?

5 Yes

1 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / laxmi

severity means how severe it is effecting the functionality

Priority means how fast it has to be fixed.

Is This Answer Correct ?

4 Yes

2 No

Difference between Severity & Priority?..

Answer / aakansha barnwal

Broad points of variance among Priority & Severity are described below.

1. priority is associated with schedule to resolve e.g. out of many issues to be tackled, which one should be addressed first by the order of its importance or urgency.
while severity is associated with benchmark quality or adherence to standard. It reflects harshness of a quality expectation.

2. priority is largely related to Business or Marketing aspect. It is a pointer towards the importance of the bug.
while severity is related to technical aspect of the product. It reflects on how bad the bug is for the system.

3.priority refers to how soon the bug should be fixed.
while Severity refers to the seriousness of the bug on the functionality of the product. Higher effect on the functionality will lead to assignment of higher severity to the bug.

4. priority status is set based on the customer requirements.
while severity type is defined by the tester based on the written test cases and functionality.

let me explain with some examples :

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 the priority is low.

if the company name is misspelled in the homepage of the website then the priority is high & severity is low to fix it.

Is This Answer Correct ?

1 Yes

0 No

Post New Answer