6.2Definitions

Severity

Severity measures the technical impact of the defect. How badly does it damage functionality? Severity is a factual observation about what the bug does to the system.

Level	Definition	Example
Critical	System crash, data loss, security breach, complete feature failure	Application crashes on checkout for all users
High	Major feature broken, no workaround	Payment fails for credit cards but works for PayPal
Medium	Feature partially broken, workaround exists	Search returns results but sorting does not work
Low	Cosmetic issue, minor inconvenience	Button alignment off by 2 pixels on one page

Priority

Priority measures the business urgency of fixing the defect. How soon must this be fixed? Priority is a business decision about scheduling.

Level	Definition	Example
P0	Fix immediately, drop everything	Production is down
P1	Fix within 24 hours	Critical flow broken for a subset of users
P2	Fix this sprint	Important but not blocking
P3	Fix eventually	Nice to have, low user impact