Severity and Priority in Software Testing

Difference between Priority and Severity 

Priority and Severity are the two most software aspects in software Testing.
On the basis of severity and priority developer will fix that issue.Both Severity and Priority are main attributes of a defect and should be provided in the bug report.

Priority is defined as how quickly that bug will be fixed.
Now how we will define the priorities and severity.

Severity can be of Following types:

Critical/Show Stopper/S1:If the application is not working properly.Any of the module/component is defected or blocked and without that you can't proceed in other modules.

Major/S2:In this some of the major modules are defected but some are working.So severity is major.

Moderate/S3:The defect by which that does not results in termination but produced incorrect results then severity will be Moderate.

Minor/S4:The defect which does not effect the functionality but still valid defect like spelling mistakes in validation messages.So severioty will be minor.

Priority:This defines the importance of the defect when it should be fixed.

Priority has following Types:

High:If the status is High then defect should be fixed immediatly before the product is released.

Medium:End user can't work with some of the functionality of the module so it can be fixed in next release.
Low:Very Less impact on end user.


Priority and Severity is given by Tester to developer in bug report:

High Priority and High Severity:
Customers are getting errors of 404 error while online booking of ticket.So priority and severity is Higher.

High Priority and Low Severity
If their is a spelling mistake on the home page of company website.

Low Priority and High Severity:
A system is not working correctly but it can be fixed in next build.
For Example:Customers are purchasing the items they can't add the product in the cart but it is not working on very old browers.

Low severity and low priority
By this user is not effecting for example terms and condition page is taking higher time to load.