What is the formal definition of Priority and Severity in VSTS

Hi all,

As the subject, what is the definition and their respective usage/focus, from VSTS's view? Any formal document?

Also, in the report service, I only see "Bugs by Priority", not "Bugs by Severity". Does MS VSTS think that priority is more important than severity during bug tracking?

Is there any approach that I could customize a report called "Bugs by Severity" based on bug's severity?

Thanks,

Leon

[486 byte] By [LeonZhu] at [2008-2-13]
# 1

Our approach to priority and severity is explained in the MSF guidance and is fairly typical against industry standards.

Priority is how important something is to fix, while
Severity is how severe the impact is on the system as a result of the bug

Severity would typically be reported by the tester, while priority would be set by the bug triage meeting.

We don't take a view that priority is more important than severity. These things are situationally specific. You are free to customize the reports to use different fields in order to reflect your specific requirements.

David, PM MSF

DavidJAnderson at 2007-9-9 > top of Msdn Tech,Visual Studio Team System,Team Foundation Server - Reporting & Warehouse...
# 2

As to how to create a report on this, the first step would be to customize your process template and set the reportable property of the Severity field to "dimension", check out the following post for more details: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=151466&SiteID=1 as it is not currently in the warehouse.

Once you do this and the adapters run, you will be able to use that field in your reports. I recommend using the report designer to customize the report. The task will primarly be changing all the references to Priority and making them Severity.

Thanks,
Othmane

OthmaneRahmouni-MSFT at 2007-9-9 > top of Msdn Tech,Visual Studio Team System,Team Foundation Server - Reporting & Warehouse...
# 3

Can someone please post a link to the MSF document detailning severity and priority definations ?

thx

gal

vvgalc at 2007-9-9 > top of Msdn Tech,Visual Studio Team System,Team Foundation Server - Reporting & Warehouse...

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