How to prioritize bugs?

Question

In my current company there isn\'t clear understanding between the test and development teams as to how severe a bug should be? There are arguments which go back and forth to re

Answer 1

I agree with the FogBugz folks that this should be kept super simple: http://fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/352/priority-vs-severity

I made up this scheme, which I find easy to remember:

• pS: seconds matter, eg, server is on fire
• pM: minutes matter, eg, something is broken
• pH: hours matter, ie, don't go to bed till this is done
• pd: days matter, ie, normal priority
• pw: weeks matter, ie, lower priority
• pm: months matter, ie, no hurry
• py: years matter, ie, maybe/someday, ie, wishlist

It roughly parallels Debian's scheme: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities

I like it because it straightforwardly combines priority and severity into a single field that's easy to set a value for.

PS: You can also pick intermediate urgencies like "pMH" for in between "minutes matter" and "hours matter". Or "pHd" is in between "hours mattter" and "days matter" -- roughly, "don't literally pull an all-nighter for it but don't work on anything else till it's done".