Željko Filipin's Blog on Software and Testing

From time to time I have to forward our bug severity scale to a customer responsible for reporting bugs.

We use only the first five. I do not remember when I reported a bug with severity six or seven.

1. Showstopper – blocks development and/or testing work, production could not run
2. Critical – crashes, loss of data, major memory leaks
3. Major – major loss of function
4. Minor – minor loss of function; other problem where easy workaround exists
5. Trivial – cosmetic issue like typo, misaligned images, and similar
6. Fix if time – super-low priority
7. Don’t Fix