Introduction

When developing and maintaining software, especially in critical domains like healthcare, ensuring reliability and quality is paramount. The Demokatalon Health website, which helps users manage medical appointments, consultations, and records, is an ideal case study to understand how software issues are handled in real-world situations. In Software Quality Assurance (SQA) testing, two important concepts that help development teams address issues efficiently are severity and priority.

• Severity refers to the impact a defect has on the system's functionality. It indicates how critical the issue is from a technical perspective.
• Priority refers to how urgently a defect should be fixed. This is based on how much the issue affects the users or the business.

These two factors help testers, developers, and managers decide the best course of action when defects are discovered. Understanding the difference between severity and priority can make the difference between a well-managed issue and a chaotic, mismanaged situation.

In this guide, we’ll explore various real-life examples involving the Demokatalon Health website to better understand these concepts. We will cover combinations like high, medium, and low severity and priority, and examine how to prioritize fixes effectively.

Comprehensive Examples of Severity and Priority in SQA Testing

1. High Severity, High Priority

• Bug Description: The website’s payment gateway fails during appointment booking.
• Severity: High. The inability to complete a payment means users cannot book appointments, which is a core feature.
• Priority: High. The issue directly affects revenue generation and user retention. It needs to be fixed immediately to avoid significant financial losses and user dissatisfaction.

2. High Severity, Medium Priority

• Bug Description: Medical history data is incorrectly displayed, but only for a specific, rarely used medical provider’s records.
• Severity: High. Incorrect medical data can have serious consequences, potentially impacting users’ healthcare decisions.
• Priority: Medium. If the problem is limited to a particular provider and affects a smaller group of users, it may not need to be fixed as urgently as other critical issues impacting the majority of users. However, a fix still needs to be scheduled soon.

3. High Severity, Low Priority

• Bug Description: Users cannot access the "Emergency Contact Information" page on the website from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m. due to scheduled server maintenance.
• Severity: High. The inability to access emergency-related data is serious, particularly for health-related scenarios.
• Priority: Low. Since this issue occurs only during planned downtime, users are likely informed in advance. The priority of fixing this is lower since maintenance is necessary and the timeframe is well-communicated.

4. Medium Severity, High Priority

• Bug Description: The “Contact Us” button on the homepage is broken and does not redirect to the appropriate support page.
• Severity: Medium. The issue affects accessibility to customer support, which is not directly tied to the health services themselves.
• Priority: High. Since users may need assistance regarding critical health information, this button needs an urgent fix to ensure smooth communication between users and the health platform.

5. Medium Severity, Medium Priority

• Bug Description: The search function on the website is slow, taking 15-20 seconds to display results.
• Severity: Medium. The functionality still works, but the slowness impacts the user experience and can lead to frustration.
• Priority: Medium. The slow search response needs improvement, but it is not blocking users entirely. A fix should be scheduled but not necessarily ahead of other critical tasks.

6. Medium Severity, Low Priority

• Bug Description: The "Doctors Availability" calendar does not show tooltips explaining time slots.
• Severity: Medium. Users can still view available time slots and make appointments, but the user experience is not as informative without tooltips.
• Priority: Low. Since this is a minor usability enhancement, it can be fixed in an upcoming release without significant urgency.

7. Low Severity, High Priority

• Bug Description: The logo of the Demokatalon Health website is not displaying correctly on the homepage.
• Severity: Low. The core functionality of the website remains unaffected.
• Priority: High. The homepage is often the first interaction for many users, and a missing logo can make the website look unprofessional, affecting trustworthiness. Therefore, this needs immediate attention even though it does not impact core features.

8. Low Severity, Medium Priority

• Bug Description: Text on the "Privacy Policy" page has alignment issues.
• Severity: Low. This is a minor cosmetic issue that does not impact functionality.
• Priority: Medium. While this is not a critical issue, fixing it soon would enhance professionalism and provide a smoother user experience, but it is not urgent.

9. Low Severity, Low Priority

• Bug Description: The icon used in the FAQ section is outdated and inconsistent with the rest of the website’s theme.
• Severity: Low. The functionality of the FAQ remains intact, and the issue is purely aesthetic.
• Priority: Low. It has little impact on functionality or user experience, and fixing it can be done as part of future UI updates.

Summary: How to Use Severity and Priority Effectively

In SQA testing, understanding the distinction between severity and priority is critical to managing resources and optimizing the quality assurance process. Here are a few key insights:

• High Severity, High Priority: These are critical, show-stopping issues that affect the core features of the platform and need immediate attention.
• High Severity, Low Priority: Issues that are technically significant but less immediate in urgency—often due to limited impact.
• Low Severity, High Priority: Issues like UI inconsistencies that impact the professionalism or trustworthiness of a website, needing quick attention even though they do not affect core functionality.

By using the Demokatalon Health website as an example, we see how balancing the severity and priority of software issues helps keep systems running smoothly and ensures a positive user experience. This structured approach to issue resolution allows QA teams to focus efforts where they matter most, maintaining both the reliability and professionalism of the product.