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I am wondering about these two bug priority during development testing.

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  • 4
    Good to note that any definition below will be only a possible definition - there is no objective/unique definition of minor and major bugs.
    – João Farias
    Aug 23, 2019 at 10:09
  • Could you please provide more context?
    – enkryptor
    Aug 23, 2019 at 15:25

4 Answers 4

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Major has more impact on how users can or cannot use the application than minor.

There is no industry standard what these terms mean. If it is necessary, you need to discuss the meaning with your team/company, as the meaning should relate to which action, turn-around time should be used.

Personally I do not care for priorities in words. Rather prioritize everything against each other. This defect is more important then this one. When prioritized fix them one by one. I suggest you use a zero-defect policy for clasification instead.

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Bugs can be classified according to priority. Classifications to use are as follows:

Major Bugs: These bugs share many of the same criteria as show-stopper bugs. However, they are not classified as Show-stopper because they don’t completely halt the workflow or application. Additionally, high priority bugs can usually be avoided by using a workaround.

Example:

  • Bugs that cause a severe reduction in application functionality

  • Irregular bugs or those that are challenging to reproduce

  • Bugs related to compliance failure

Minor Bugs: This type of bug does not result in complete system failure or completely halt workflows or programs. However, Minor bugs usually cause significant annoyance or frustration among users and can reduce efficiency or productivity.

Example:

  • App design and UI bugs

  • Bugs that prevent music, video or audio from being played

  • Pathfinding bugs

  • Bugs impacting shaders and other graphic design elements

  • Camera or clipping errors

  • Localization errors

  • Documentation errors

  • Legal issues

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  • While your examples of major bugs seem generic enough, the examples of minor bugs seem oddly specific. Let's say I'm writing a word processor; I wouldn't consider a lack of ability for it to play music to be a bug. On the other hand, if I'm writing an audio player, then a lack of ability to play music is an utter showstopper, since the application cannot be used for its intended purpose.
    – user
    Aug 23, 2019 at 21:04
  • @aCVn It depends on the context like for youtube application it's a Showstopper because of the whole business depends on the Video player. & if the same video player doesn't work for Amazon for any product it will be minor which is not affecting e-commerce business.
    – Nitin Rastogi
    Aug 26, 2019 at 4:26
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The definition of these terms is whatever your business decides to agree that they mean.

This is important to agree and communicate, so that when people create a new bug or see a bug, they can immediately tell something about it based solely on that priority field. If there is not common agreement on the definition of these priorities, they become much less useful and more of a waste of time.

As new situations are encountered and the bug policy doesn't seem to give good guidance, discuss it, agree on it, and document that decision by updating the policy.

A very simple example might be something like:

Major bug: Danger to human life; Damage to equipment; Program crash; Requires power cycle to recover; Loss of user data; critical calculation incorrect; etc.

Minor bug: Cosmetic issue (wrong color/incorrect font); A workaround exists; Documentation problem; Degraded user experience (but still functioning) to some limit; etc.

However, when you get a lot of bugs, and have few priorities (in this example 2), eventually you will encounter a situation where you have a large set and at that point you really can't distinguish within the bugs within each group. Ranking bugs relative to each other as Niels mentions in his answer can have other benefits - like actually sequencing the order that they are addressed and seeing at a glance where it fits in the (possibly big pile of) work.

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As with many questions they eventually go full circle.

As these two bug types are essentially in short what their prefix describes.

Major bugs:In short are progression halting, UI functionality broken, essentially anything that would be in the category of must finish. Or else delay the final product as to avoid any signs of incompetence.

Minor bugs: Are best summed up as optional as to whether or not to fix these bugs aren't going to halt the release. In fact many cases minor bugs do indeed make it into the retail release. Often times its a matter of just not having time to fix said minor bug. But its deemed that said bug can be fixed later on and that the bug wont ruin the immersion or enjoyment of said game/product

One last bit I apologize if the answers sound VERY generic but the types of bugs vary enormously. As in some occasions what maybe are minor bugs can become depending on how large or wide they are can become Major bugs and vice versa. Its best though if you have a superior to just ask for their opinion. Also one last bit sometimes bugs can also be deemed by devs WNF or NAB. Sometimes it can be hard to determine what is a bug and what is working as intended.

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