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Diff b/w Showstopper and Critical and High

Printed From: One Stop Testing
Category: Quality Assurance @ OneStopTesting
Forum Name: Defect Management@ OneStopTesting
Forum Discription: Defect is the worst Nightmare of any Testing Engineer and is basically the elimination of bugs in software and flaws in hardware.
URL: http://forum.onestoptesting.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=2645
Printed Date: 19Dec2024 at 6:36pm


Topic: Diff b/w Showstopper and Critical and High
Posted By: tanushree
Subject: Diff b/w Showstopper and Critical and High
Date Posted: 03Oct2007 at 12:14am
Shouldn't the definition be provided by the testing or QA organization? There are definitions that are similar across industries and in testing communities but bottom line, it depends on the maturity of your organization. Each of us can provide you what we use in our day to day work but you should define these and include in your test plan/strategy and get buy in from your testing groups that it is clearly understood. Here is what we use:
• Critical- Testing of a major function has stopped or the defect has cause other processes previously working to stop functioning blocking testing from continuing.

• System has crashed

• No workaround for issue

• Data will/could be corrupted

• High - Critical functionality does not function but it does not stop testing activities from continuing. It also does not degrade system responses or functionality of other processes. Workarounds can be performed to move beyond the defect

• Medium- Cosmetic issues or non-critical defects such as formatting of a screen, font size or grammar may need to be corrected prior to implementation. Testing can continue without any degradation in the system

• Low- Non critical items that may function correctly but could be performed more efficiently. This is usually a bucket for future enhancements. Move something from one screen to another or change the tab order for a screen

• Showstopper-Showstopper is not a severity level assignment but rather a notification that a defect will stop the implementation of the code/release if not fixed with a temporary or long term solution; this should be identified as a when the defect is opened and not upgraded later in the lifecycle. Medium and Low defects should rarely be identified as showstoppers. Need to identify and provide justification for why considered showstopper in the body of the ticket
• Number of external customers impacted
• Significance impact to business unit or business processing
• What happens if we were to go to production with the defect


Replies:
Posted By: praveen.1781
Date Posted: 30Oct2007 at 6:04am
The terminology differs from organization to organization. The whole sole meaning of the terms 'Critical', 'Showstopper' serve the same purpose irrespective of the difference in their terminology. Critical or Showstopper define the effect of the bug on the application the Bugs that are ranked critical or showstopper are very severe and they crash the application. Without fixing whom the testing process cannot continue.\
 
        The bugs with high priority effect the system but the application does not crash out where a certain part of the module will be effected very severely and if left out un fixed will result in the malfunction of the module.


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