Module 4 · Bug reporting
Severity and priority
Two different questions: how bad is the impact, and how soon should it be fixed?
About 7 min reading and 5 min practice (estimates)
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Read
Learning objectives
- Define severity and priority and explain why they differ.
- Assign both to realistic examples.
- Justify a rating with facts about impact and users.
Explanation
- Severity describes the impact on the product or user: crash, data loss, wrong money, blocked flow, cosmetic issue. Testers usually propose it.
- Priority describes how urgently the team will fix it, considering severity plus business context: release dates, number of users, workarounds, reputation. The product owner usually decides it.
They often move together, but not always. Explain your severity with facts — who is affected, how often, whether there is a workaround — so the priority decision is easy to make.
Example: four bugs
| Bug | Severity | Priority | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shop name misspelled on the home page | Low | High | Cosmetic, but seen by every visitor |
| Yearly report export crashes for one admin | High | Low | Crash, but rare and a workaround exists |
| Wrong total for all orders with a promotion code | Critical | Highest | Money is wrong for many customers |
| Tooltip overlaps a label on one old browser | Low | Low | Cosmetic and rarely seen |
Common mistakes
- Marking everything Critical, so the label stops meaning anything.
- Confusing your personal frustration with the impact on users.
- Changing severity because a fix would be inconvenient.
Try
Practise what you just read. Answers are checked here; nothing is graded publicly or counts toward Bug Arena.
Exercise
On the Arabic site, the confirmation page shows the order number in the wrong place, but the number is correct and readable. Payment and delivery work. Which rating is most reasonable?
Review
Check yourself — you should now be able to:
- Define severity and priority and explain why they differ.
- Assign both to realistic examples.
- Justify a rating with facts about impact and users.
Continue
When you’re ready, mark the lesson complete in the Try step and move on.
Marked as read when you reach the end of the lesson.