Severity / Priority Calculator

Weighted inputs across 7 factors produce a suggested Severity, Priority (P1-P4), and plain-English rationale.

Runs 100% client-side
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On this page4 sections

User Impact

How many users are affected and how severely?

weight 3x

Business Impact

Damage to revenue, reputation, or operations?

weight 3x

Frequency

How often does this bug occur?

weight 2x

No Workaround

No acceptable workaround exists?

weight 2x

Data Loss Risk

Could this cause data corruption or loss?

weight 4x

Security Risk

Could this expose a security vulnerability?

weight 4x

Revenue Blocker

Directly blocks checkout, payments, or sales?

weight 3x

HOW TO USE

  1. 01Rate each of the seven factors — user impact, business impact, frequency, workaround, data-loss, security, and revenue.
  2. 02Click Calculate to get a suggested Severity, a Priority label (P1–P4), and a plain-English rationale.
  3. 03Copy the rationale sentence straight into your ticket to justify the rating.

Try it

Checkout broken on mobile: high user + revenue impact, no workaround → expect High / P1

WHEN TO USE

Use this calculator when you need to justify or calibrate a defect's Severity and Priority before filing it. Rate seven weighted factors -- user impact, business impact, frequency, whether a workaround exists, data loss risk, security exposure, and revenue impact -- and the calculator returns a suggested Severity (Low/Medium/High/Critical), a Priority label (P1-P4), and a plain-English rationale sentence you can paste directly into your ticket.

WHAT BUGS THIS FINDS

  • Severity/Priority mismatch

    Defects labelled Critical/P3 or Low/P1 without justification, causing sprint confusion.

  • Under-reported high-impact bugs

    Bugs affecting revenue or data integrity filed as Medium because 'it has a workaround'.

QA USE CASES

01

Calibrating a new defect before triage

Score the 7 factors → confirm or adjust Severity/Priority before submitting

02

Justifying escalation to a stakeholder

Share the rationale sentence to explain why a bug is P1 and not P2

03

Comparing two defects for sprint prioritisation

Run both through the calculator → compare weighted scores

04

Onboarding new QA engineers

Use as a learning exercise to understand severity vs priority distinctions