When it comes to most bugs its fairly easy to gauge exactly how severe they might be. For example an E-Commerce website that does not allow you to add any items to your shopping basket is clearly a critical bug where as a spelling mistake ranks much lower in the grand scheme of things.

However, just because this spelling mistake is a low priority bug in this application it doesn’t mean that spelling mistakes should be considered as low priority in every application; the nature of the content quite frequently determines the severity. Let’s pretend this same bug was to occur on our sister company’s website (over at http://www.11plusswot.co.uk/Home.aspx) which specialises in preparing children for their 11+ exams. Potential customers might lose faith in a site that is meant to be teaching their children English but can’t actually spell correctly themselves. This could also result in a loss of sales (albeit potentially not as bad as no one being able to place an order at all).

When forming test plans for your project it is little factors such as this that you need to ensure that you do not overlook.