With the different types of bugs that may affect your software development projects, it’s important to understand how proper classification can help improve your testing process. There are successful practices that you can use to achieve in-depth testing results.

For instance, prioritization and detection of bugs can save you time and money. If you’re not sure whether the approach you use will provide you with successful output, you may consider software testing services from experts in the field.

Classification and Detection of Software Bugs

Software bugs are known or unknown defects that occur in the SDLC process. These errors cause computer programs and systems to produce unexpected and inaccurate results. Software testing is the procedure of detecting specific issues when creating software programs and apps.


A tester performs the testing process to discover errors and improve the functionality of a program. There are three classifications of bugs in software testing: by nature, by severity, and by priority. Software bugs classified by severity and priority are commonly present in tracking systems.

The following are software bugs by nature:

  1. Security bugs. These software defects allow for potential security attacks. The most common examples of this type of bug include weak authentication, buffer overflows, XSS vulnerabilities, logical errors, and encryption errors.
  1.  Compatibility bugs. If you test your software and you have found out there is no consistency, there might be some compatibility bugs present. It could happen in some types of hardware, devices, browsers, and operating systems. Compatibility errors in an app may be due to changes in content alignment, scroll bar, and font size.
  1. Usability bugs. These defects make your software inconvenient to navigate, which could lead to a poor user experience. Some common reasons for usability bugs include a complex sign-up process and difficult to navigate content layout.
  1. Performance bugs. You can detect these errors by testing your software’s performance, which usually involves response time, resource consumption, stability, and speed. For example, performance bugs may include response time that is much longer than the indicated time in the system’s requirements.
  1. Functional bugs. These errors occur when the program doesn’t comply with the standard requirements for software functionality. Functional errors may be present in the search engine of a website. For instance, you are not getting any results when you enter a product name when it’s indicated in the program’s requirements that they can search for products using their ID or name.

Here are software bugs by severity:

  1. Low severity bugs. These are errors in an application or software that often include a slight difference in the color or size of a button.
  1. Medium severity bugs. These are minor defects such as broken links in the terms and conditions section of an app.
  1. High severity bugs. An example of this error is an email provider that doesn’t allow users to add multiple email addresses as a recipient.
  1. Critical bugs. This defect blocks the functionality of a module or system. Critical errors need to be fixed before making any further testing to a program or software.

Software bugs by priority are as follows:

  1. Low priority bugs. These include defects that don’t require a solution to comply with exit criteria. However, solutions can be applied before the software product becomes accessible.
  1. Medium priority bugs. After releasing an app, these defects can be corrected to return the expected results using the correct format in the browser.
  1. High priority bugs. Before you release your app or software product, these defects should be corrected to comply with the exit criteria.
  1. Urgent bugs. These errors must be corrected within 24 hours immediately after bugs are detected.

Final words

Determining the different types of bugs in software testing is crucial because it helps you assign the right project team to handle the defects. In addition, it streamlines bug prioritization while speeding up development to boost the success rate of your software testing process.