Explain the difference between Bug Priority and Severity with examples

Severity: Impact of the bug on the application’s functionality

Priority: Urgency of fixing the bug from business perspective

Severity Levels

• Critical: Application crash, data loss, security breach
• Major: Major functionality broken
• Minor: Minor functionality issue
• Trivial: UI/cosmetic issues

Priority Levels

• P1 (High): Must fix immediately
• P2 (Medium): Fix in next release
• P3 (Low): Fix when time permits

Examples

1. High Severity, High Priority:

• Example: Payment gateway not working on e-commerce site
• Impact: Critical business loss
• Action: Fix immediately

2. High Severity, Low Priority:

• Example: Crash in rarely used admin feature
• Impact: Severe but affects few users
• Action: Can be scheduled for next release

3. Low Severity, High Priority:

• Example: Company logo misspelled on homepage
• Impact: Minor technical issue but major brand impact
• Action: Fix immediately for business reasons

4. Low Severity, Low Priority:

• Example: Minor UI alignment issue in footer
• Impact: Minimal impact on users and business
• Action: Fix when convenient

Who Decides

• Severity: Determined by QA/Testers based on technical impact
• Priority: Determined by Product Owner/Business based on business needs