1 min lesson
Severity: how bad is the failure itself
Connect "How bad is the failure itself" to the decision you would make.
Step 1 of 3
Severity: how bad is the failure itselfone report, judged on its worst outcome
Severity describes the damage independent of how many people hit it. A single user losing uncommitted work is a serious event even if they're the only one. Rank failure classes from the one you'd interrupt someone over down to the one that can wait a sprint.
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Advanced table
Severity is graded on the worst plausible outcome, not the average one
- Tier
- S0: Critical
- What it means
- Data loss, security exposure or full outage. A privacy-mode leak is S0 before you know how many users it touched.
- Tier
- S1: Major
- What it means
- Core workflow blocked, no workaround. An Agent that loops and never completes lands here.
- Tier
- S2: Degraded
- What it means
- Works but worse, or a workaround exists. Codebase indexing that is slow but eventually completes is S2.
- Tier
- S3: Cosmetic
- What it means
- Annoyance, no functional loss.
| Tier | What it means |
|---|---|
| S0: Critical | Data loss, security exposure or full outage. A privacy-mode leak is S0 before you know how many users it touched. |
| S1: Major | Core workflow blocked, no workaround. An Agent that loops and never completes lands here. |
| S2: Degraded | Works but worse, or a workaround exists. Codebase indexing that is slow but eventually completes is S2. |
| S3: Cosmetic | Annoyance, no functional loss. |
Severity is graded on the worst plausible outcome, not the average one.
Watch out
Anything that can destroy a user's code or expose their data is S0 whatever the reporter count. If you find yourself debating whether a single-user data-loss bug is "really" urgent, you've already mis-graded it.