🔎 Understanding Severity and Priority in Software Testing
This article highlights two key properties of software testing. It has been condensed for simplicity, and if you find it helpful, kindly show your appreciation by clapping and leaving a comment below.
Enjoy your reading experience! 😎
🔖Introduction
🐞In the process of quality assurance, software testers frequently encounter a diverse range of bugs and issues that affect various aspects of a system’s features. Ensuring the timely delivery of high-quality products to our customers can present challenges for the product development team.
However, as meticulous quality assurance engineers who follow industry-level best practices, we possess the ability to effectively assess and prioritize bug tickets and issues, accurately classifying them based on their nature.
Two properties of defect management are severity and priority. These aspects play a crucial role in understanding and distinguishing between different types of issues.
To grasp their significance fully, let’s explore these two distinct concepts in detail.
🔖Severity in Software Testing
In software testing, severity is a crucial concept that refers to the level of seriousness of a defect, directly impacting the functionality of the system.
During this phase, software testers undertake the task of carefully analyzing and classifying these defects into various levels, including critical, major, minor, and low, based on their respective degrees of severity.
📌Critical:
This critical defect within the application’s functionality puts software testers in a challenging position, preventing them from moving forward. Such defects can cause significant issues in the system and are classified as critical bugs.
📝 Let’s consider an example: Imagine a banking app that lets users transfer money between accounts. Now, suppose there’s a serious problem in the app called a critical severity bug. This bug causes the app to mistakenly send money to the wrong person without any checks or permission.
This is a serious problem because it puts the bank’s system at risk and can lead to financial losses and privacy breaches for the users. So, it’s crucial to understand such situations in order to protect everyone’s money and personal information.
During this crucial stage, the concept of priority also comes into play. Software testers take over the responsibility of issuing a ticket, marking the severity level as critical, and assigning it the highest priority to address the issue. The ticket is then passed on to a designated developer for resolution.
📌Major:
A major defect, although not as critical as a defect of the highest severity level, can still have a significant impact on the user’s experience. These defects may not cause severe consequences for the application, but they do hinder important system functionalities from functioning as expected. As a result, they are categorized as major defects.
📝 Let’s consider an example: Imagine you’re in the process of making an online payment for the goods you have carefully selected. After diligently updating all the required confidential card details, you click the ‘proceed’ button. However, due to a defect in the application, an incorrect notification pops up, falsely indicating a payment failure despite meeting all the valid conditions.
📌Minor:
A minor defect refers to a bug that doesn’t impact the application’s functionality. When planning an immediate release, the product manager may decide to temporarily set aside these categorized bugs for fixing at a later date, once identified by the software tester.
📝 Let’s consider an example: Imagine you’re using your banking system and switching between the “Send Cash” and “Pay Bills” options. As you navigate, you notice a significant delay with a shimmer loader displayed. This delays the page loading process, resulting in a poor user experience and potentially leading to a loss of customer loyalty and satisfaction.
It’s important to address such minor defects to ensure a seamless user experience, as they may seem insignificant individually but can accumulate and impact overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
📌Low:
A minor defect is characterized by a bug that is assigned a lower priority in terms of urgency.
📝Let’s consider an example: Imagine an application for a banking system where the submit button is mistakenly labeled as “tubsmit.”
Although these issues do not directly impact the system’s functionality, they should still prevent any potential confusion or misunderstandings.
By addressing such minor defects, we ensure a seamless user experience and eliminate any possible misconceptions.
🔖Priority in Software Testing
💻 By this point, you should have gained a thorough understanding of severity, its meaning, and the various levels associated with it.
However, it’s important to note that priority goes beyond severity and entails a sense of urgency in resolving a defect in the software development cycle.
With that in mind, let’s dive deeper into the concept of priority and its significance in bug management.
📝 Important note: setting the priority of a bug can also be varied when the nature and times are also considered.
📌High:
In most situations, a defect of high severity is usually classified as a high-priority bug as well. However, it’s important to consider other factors, such as user impact and business requirements, as this might influence the prioritization.
When a defect has a significant impact on financial aspects or the user experience (UX), it is given the highest priority for bug resolution. These types of bugs have the potential to cause disruptions throughout the entire application, demanding immediate attention.
By assigning a high priority to these critical issues, we ensure that they are promptly addressed, reducing the time required for resolution.
This proactive approach not only safeguards the performance of the application but also ensures user satisfaction, ultimately contributing to the success of the business.
📌Medium:
Bugs that have a medium priority are typically those that have a minimal impact on the business and its customers. They are not as urgent as high-priority defects and can be addressed by the development team when they have the available capacity.
These bugs can be resolved either in the current software release or in the upcoming release plan.
This approach ensures that resources are allocated efficiently, allowing the team to tackle more critical issues first while still addressing medium-priority bugs in a timely manner.
📌Low:
Low-priority defects are addressed after high- and medium-priority defects have been resolved. Typically, the fixes for low-priority defects are bundled with those for medium- or high-priority issues.
This approach ensures that the most critical bugs are given priority while still addressing lower-priority concerns.
Conclusion
👩🏻💻As a software tester, correctly classifying defects and bugs based on their type, standard, and nature is crucial.
Mastering severity and priority concepts enables individuals and organizations to make informed decisions, allocate resources effectively, and manage workflows efficiently.
Integrating these concepts into our daily practices enhances problem-solving abilities, mitigates risks, and leads to better outcomes in our personal and professional lives.
Discover how these practices can revolutionize your software testing and boost overall productivity.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, and I hope you found it helpful in improving your understanding of software testing. Your support means a lot, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my knowledge with you. 🧿💕
References:
Title: “Difference Between Priority and Severity”
Author: John Doe
Website: TestSigma
Blog URL: https://testsigma.com/blog/difference-between-priority-and-severity/
Author: Nishma Mohideen
